4.5
Brash, abrasive and colossal in every sense of the word, Kid Kapichi call for political atonements in a rowdy third.
OVERVIEW
Kid Kapichi’s formula is simple in theory – but marvellous in design. The Hastings group have been drilling fast four-to-floor punk rock anthems into our earholes for six years now and it doesn’t seem that their fury has let up one iota. Ever since the big riffage in Death Dips hit us square in the face back in 2019, Beetham and co have been cutting a Kid Kapichi shaped hole in every rock cheat sheet imaginable. Blistering noise with bombastic lyricism wrapped in barbed affronts to working class struggle is very much Kapichi’s MO.
Frontman Ben Beetham takes the mantel on his soapbox as he echoes public outrage in Sardines – “You’re angry, You’re angry and you don’t know why,” to Vylan’s New England pervading the same nursery rhyme sentiment – “is it you can’t change, or that you won’t change?” Hard-hitting truths to an explosive backdrop is not exactly new in the world of punk. But they’re not here to reinvent the wheel. They’re here to disturb the authoritarianism and howl as loud as they can while doing it. A dose of Kid Kapichi will have you zealous on your morning commute. A double-dose of Kid Kapichi will have you smashing the gaff with your dad’s baseball bat.
Off the back of their highly-regarded Here’s What You Could’ve Won in 2022, we now see the bands’ third statement with There Goes The Neighbourhood – a record injected with the same high-octane thrills we’ve come to expect. During one of our disastrous periods in modern politics, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
SONG-TO-SONG
The album essentially starts as it means to carry on with Artillery – a highly strung, pensive opener with a bass like gravel and an odd-time chorus explosion, “easy to be ignorant with money in your fists, money on your wrist.” Let’s Get To Work is very much a Kapichi staple – short. fast. loud – embezzled with the best fart quip of the century, “remember, you’re not a has-been – you’re a Heinz bean.” Tamagotchi is a mid-life crisis jettisoned into crunchy noise, “Hey, don’t the time just slip away? It was only yesterday.”
Can EU Hear Me? evokes the tongue-and-cheek high-energy dazzle of Reytons and Bilk which fits comfortably while Get Down is an embellished anthem aching to be washed into those sticky floors with that hypnotic chord progression. 999 harks back to Blossoms-era for Frank Carter’s and his hard-hitting snakes, as it throws punches at the corrupt effigies of UK law & order, “It’s not one bad apple, it’s the whole goddam tree,” aptly crowned as squealing swines in uniforms, with a defiant clarity of purpose.
Madness-enthused Zombie Nation is a reckless ska-punk bop enthused with Suggs’ stirring words of a world very much in a mess, as Suchak’s music video plays homage to Brit-romp Shaun of the Dead. I think I’ve seen this scene before…
The album draws out through the same enigmatic fashion with Oliver Twist – a wall of noise – into Jimi, an acoustic standard that shrouds the album in a foregone conclusion.
“We’re a product of our environment,” nods Jack. “We operate as a band in the same way that Hastings operates as a town. It’s a place with a punk ethos, where people are quite, ‘Fuck you!’ and like to do the opposite of what they’re told, but where we still look out for each other and care about community. It wasn’t always a nice place to be, but that’s why we’re proud of it.” – Jack talking to Kerrang, 2024.
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