After hearing a preview of The Empty Page’s latest single, Big Nasty Palpitations, during their support slot for BERRIES at Gullivers in March and witnessing the visceral fire that has been lit under the Manchester-based emissaries of anxious angst, all it took was the impetus of the angular guitars and subversive anthemics to convince me that it would be the quintessential indie pop hit of the summer.
It may not be your archetypal boy meets girl before releasing a ‘better off without you’ single in the Autumn. The 80s industrial augmented hit is a testament to where society will stand this summer, with conflict scattering rubble like confetti and blowing equally sizeable holes in our assurance that the world is a safe place where your liberty can’t be stripped away at the whim of a sadistically malignant narcissist.
For the anxious, feel your palpitating heart catch in your tight throat under the duress of buzzsaw riffs that are now definitively back in trend. For anyone privileged enough to not know what it feels like to go under when it appears fabric of tangible reality has been pulled from beneath you, grab a snapshot of the dissent into consternation.
Kel said: “Everyone I know has paper-thin mental health at the moment. The world is run by terrifying people who have little regard for us powerless humans who are just trying to get on with our lives. I woke up one too many times with the fear and reached for a pen at 3am to get those grim feelings out of my system. We’ve always been a socially aware band, and the new album definitely has a glittery, dystopian thread running through it that I think is very apparent on this track.”
Big Nasty Palpitations, produced by Morton Kong at Eve Studios, Stockport, hit the airwaves on May 26 ahead of their sophomore LP, which is set to drop later this year.
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Review by Amelia Vandergast