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Paisley, Scotland’s Close Lobsters have just released the new EP, ”Stepping Across”. The EP features three new songs. The outstanding title track is also featured in a cleaned up “de-fucked” edit, and a rousing extended remix. The EP was recorded with John Rivers, who has a long history with the band, in Spring ’24.
To catch up many US indie pop/rock fans who may not be familiar with Close Lobsters, their first phase of existence ran from 1985-89. I have no idea how I would have heard them initially, as I missed the now legendary NME C86 tape, but other C86 bands like Soup Dragons and Mighty Lemon Drops were definitely on my radar around that same time of 1986-87. And while those bands’ early efforts were very good, they also sounded a lot like predecessors, Buzzcocks and Echo & The Bunnymen respectively. I kept coming back to Close Lobsters (and still do) with their more original sound rife with addictive, rapid fire, jangled melodies.
Musically, the Lobsters evolved rapidly. “Firestation Towers” (from the C86 tape) is youthful, edgy, and biting, but already has the DNA of what became wider-ranging and gloriously tuneful on songs like “I Kiss the Flowers in Bloom” off their first LP, ”Foxheads Stalk This Land” (Fire, 1987) or “Lovely Little Swan” on LP number two, ”Headache Rhetoric” (Fire, 1989).
They carried with them fast tempos, strong songs, and just enough humor and swagger. “Violently Pretty Face” is delightful enough to want to play at a wedding party, but possibly ill-advised with a title like that! In some ways, they were a great example of contemporary, forward-looking UK indie pop/rock in the late 80s before they fizzled out just as Britpop kicked off the 90s.
Among their seven or so 80s singles, “Let’s Make Some Plans” is a standout, stoned-out jangle confection, since covered by The Wedding Present and more recently The Luxembourg Signal.Jump ahead to 2012 and the band reunited for festivals, while then releasing singles/EPs that year, in 2014 and in 2016. Like everyone else, they were stuck in the sand during COVID, with unfortunate timing, having put out their third LP just prior to lockdown. ”Post Neo Anti: Arte Povera in the Forest of Symbols” (Last Night From Glasgow, Shelflife, 2020) compiled singles from 2014 and 2016 with new songs, and thankfully has the chiming guitars fully intact alongside their strong pop sense delivered with characteristic swagger. Again, Rivers produced, and the results are superb.
In chatting via email this past week with singer/frontman/lyricist, Andrew Burnett, it’s clear he and the band got sideswiped by COVID but are forging onward not simply as a “heritage” band playing the hits on some imagined, depressing C86 river cruise (eeesh, what a visual that conjures!) They’re driven to write new music.
David: “Post Neo Anti: Arte Povera in the Forest of Symbols”. That was 2020. The title is quite a mouthful! Had to look it up to identify the Italian art movement. As a visual artist myself, I’m intrigued. Obviously COVID striking in 2020 messed up a lot of bands as far as any momentum they were building. Was that true for you guys? Now “Stepping Across” has just come out. Do you have plans for a full album in the works? More touring?
Andrew: Re- Arte Povera, we made a play on the fact we were impoverished and love the bel paese. The forest of symbols is Baudelaire-ian in intent.
A) COVID struck just as we released the album! We found ourselves in the unlikely situation where a lot of folk who attended our launch gig in late February 2020 in Glasgow were concerned that that would be their very last show, ever! Wouldn’t that have been hilarious? You wait two decades to release an album and as soon as you do there is a global meltdown!
B) The enormous success of our recent appearance at the ‘At the Edge of the Sea’ Festival in Brighton in August means that the plans for a new album are very much up and running. We will return to the rehearsal studio to conjure up more stuff and record it in due course! The working title for this new album is ”Paisley via Govan & Aberdeen”.”
David: I imagine the reality is that this is a very part time side project in all of your lives at this point. And yet I bet the response has been good, as far as the shows you played and fan response to the new music. Kind of addictive and making you maybe want to keep rolling, yes?
Andrew: “Yes, indeed. Art will out. It’s truly excellent to be free of the commodity system!”
David: I’m curious if your songwriting is all that different from the first phase of the band back in the 80s? Do you all live close to each other? Still in Paisley or the area? Or is it more of a send files back and forth kind of thing to put together the new music?
Andrew: “We use relatively traditional methods to pull the material together. One of the group, Tom, lives in London so that makes it a little more tricky. However, in US terms the 400 miles from London to Glasgow is a breeze.”
David: I appreciate that you’re writing excellent new music as opposed to simply playing heritage shows or older material. Was that a critical decision for one or all of you in the band?
Andrew: “We are dedicated to the creation of the new. We play ‘the hits’ live but my intent is that when we do so we do it with a nod to the great Bob Dylan who reinterprets tracks each time he plays them. ‘Shelter from the Storm’ live is a wondrous and magnificent inspiration. Our new album will consist of 12 brand new tracks.”
David: The new “Stepping Across” EP sounds fantastic and all three tunes are great. Immediately identifiable as CL! Was there a specific inspiration to these songs and getting them done now? The monster-of-a-song, “Stepping Across” sounds like it’s referring to some sort of afterlife experience (I noticed the cross on the cover art, too). But it also lyrically sounds like it’s about somebody losing their mind. Care to share the story behind the tune?
Andrew: “A) We felt that time was running away and we needed to get the tracks out pronto. B) I am delighted that you have received Stepping Across so well. It draws on the work of Dostoyevsky. Specifically ‘Crime and Punishment’. As we know old Dostoyevsky wove his magic with ‘The Madmen’. For me it kind of functions like Close Lobsters’ ‘Ballad of the Band’. An autobiographical story of who we are. A Fable of Transgression no less.”
David: Are you into any new(er) bands that have come out in recent years? What’s on your turntable?
Andrew: “I am currently listening to Jack White’s new album, ”No Name” and some of Been Stellar’s “Scream From New York, NY”. Also waiting, like everybody else, on Frank Ocean to release something new. He’s welcome to contribute something to our new album of course!”
David: Anything else you’d like to let Big Takeover readers know about Close Lobsters at this point in time?
LinksAndrew: “Everything is Moving always and forever the same. We seek a way of thinking movement in movement. We aim one fine day to return to the land of the free.”
