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A whole quarter century has passed since Skunk Anansie’s history-making show as the final band of the previous millennium to headline Glastonbury, which rounded off a blazing run of multi-platinum albums and monster hits. A lengthy sabbatical, solo albums and side projects followed before these trailblazing British “Clit Rock” icons reunited in 2009. Alas their ongoing second act has so far produced just two fairly patchy albums.
Skunk Anansie’s first album in nine years, The Painful Truth lands in the thick of an extended rough patch for the band. Following management shake-ups, plus bassist Cass Lewis and drummer Mark Richardson both undergoing cancer treatment, life has acquired a new urgency. And resting on their laurels would mean creative death
To this end, the Skunks brought in producer Dave Sitek (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Weezer, Beyoncé and more). Sitek stripped away the band’s signature heavy guitar riffs and clobbering drums, and pushed a more electro-friendly post-punk sound, to mostly positive effect. Their alt.rock energy remains, but their overwrought nu-metal bombast is dialled down.
This gung-ho reboot attitude is evident instantly on fantastic opener An Artist Is An Artist, a declamatory spoken-word diatribe over propulsive Kraut-infused grooves and angular guitar. The lyric insists defiantly that true artists remain vital and engaged at any age, regardless of critical disdain and shifting fashions. ‘They ain’t here for your pleasure, changing like the British weather!’ Skin proclaims. If any veteran band needed a galvanising mid-career manifesto, it’s this one.
Elsewhere an impressive eclecticism rules. In the trip-hop power ballad Shame, Skin broods on lingering family wounds in a shredded vibrato before switching gear for the soaring, operatic chorus. On the deadpan disco-rocker Fell In Love With A Girl she unpacks the kinky delights of a bizarre love triangle with another woman and a ‘typical fuckboy’. Riffing on their shared love of Dennis Bovell’s production work for The Slits, Sitek and the Skunks also cook up a dub-infused punky reggae party on Shoulda Been You.
It’s occasionally shrill and clunky, but from proudly queer love songs to spine-tingling piano weepies to stadium-sized lust confessionals this is Skunk Anansie’s most musically ambitious album yet, and their best work for decades. It’s great to have these alternative national treasures back on such lively, adventurous, emotionally raw form.
