Regressing Like We Mean It with Other Half
The UK post-punk trio's Dark Ageism is coming for the summer solstice
Other Half are doing absolutely nothing to disprove my hypothesis that all the best fucking bands right now are coming out of the UK. I’m not even sure why I included the “right now,” as this has been a trend for as long as I can remember. As a resident of Rhode Island, this means that while I live in a state that affords me one of the best chances of reaching out and poking the UK if I tried really really hard (relative to, say, Oklahoma) I still can’t afford to order any of the damn vinyl. Is this the future you want, O Complex Forces That Make Shipping Things Globally Very Expensive? Is this the world you want to live in?
This noisy Norwich band comprises Cal Hudson (guitar/vox), Sophie “Soapy” Porter (bass/vox), and Alfie Adams (drums). Norwich, I learned this week, is a city in Norfolk, UK. Now we all know what’s in what here. As for what’s in this blog post, originally it was intended to be a pretty straightforward review of Other Half’s latest single Pastoral Existence, but I ended up getting overexcited about their upcoming record Dark Ageism as a whole and just had to go deeper. The band were super friendly when I reached out via email and Cal graciously answered all of my burning questions.
From record label Big Scary Monsters’ website:
[Dark Ageism] finds its characters negotiating what it means to be in their 30’s and still doing the same things they were doing as teenagers. Their own personal dark age, where the only things that seems to change is the price of a pint, and how much cosmic debt they’ve accrued over all the years of ruinous shit.
HPF: So first of all, thanks for taking the time to entertain my questions here. Your recent singles have been blipping across my radar lately online and I’m really excited for Dark Ageism to come out in full on June 21st. I’m not sure which end of your 30’s y’all are closest to, but as an elder millennial myself, this idea of viewing the present as a sort of precarious extension of the past definitely resonates with me. And I love the play on words in the title. Tell me a bit about what it’s been like to be living and making music in this “personal dark age.” Is it really so personal, do you think, or are we all sort of digging up the same beets with rusty trowels at this point?
CH: We range from early to mid, with the arse-end still a few years off yet. When I say personal dark age, I’m painting in pretty broad strokes; it just suddenly occurred to me that I’d been doing exactly the same thing for well over 10 years, and the only milestones seemed to be regressive ones. I’m living back with my mum, which is a sure fire way of dredging up some pointed questions about what you’ve chosen to do with your life, but also I realised that I’m there because I desperately want to preserve the little life I’ve built for myself. Other Half has been doing the same thing for over 10 years too, churning out the same lumpen rock song over and over again, and I guess it just occurred to me that I never want that to change, it’s the best thing in the world. Dark Ageism is a record about falling in love with the rut you’re in, and turning that rut into your bread and butter.”
HPF: I have to ask… the fact that the record is dropping just about on the summer solstice, a time associated with renewal and putting an end to stagnation and really the opposite of darkness: was that intentional? Are you trying to blot out the damn sun here?
CH: I think intentional would be a bit of a reach, but certainly a happy coincidence. The record definitely revels in its own blackened world view, basking in all that bile, but ironically, it’s also our most ‘summery.’ A lot of the songs stem from how much of an idyllic time I had over the multiple Covid lockdowns; a strange sentence to type out I realise, but just having endless hours to potter about on my bike in the sun, just being fully invested in the world around me, that felt pretty revolutionary. Then of course, everything just went back to the way it was before. Songs like Pastoral Existence and Farm Games are me still trying to unknot all those feelings, coming to terms with the fact I’ll probably never have that ever again. Summer is over, forever man.
HPF: I want to get into the three singles you’ve released in a moment, but I’m curious about what I’ve read with regard to Dark Ageism being the third record in a trilogy. Tell me a bit about that. Did you actually manage to plan a three-album thematic triptych (holy foresight, Batman) or is it something that you realized was happening along the way? From the three songs, it’s clear that Dark Ageism is a very intentional record with a message and I love the idea that it’s a part of something even bigger.
CH: I’d always intended to have all the records set in the same world with all the same characters, but as far as a trilogy goes I think we only settled on that midway through making the second record. Soft Action didn’t really tie up anything story-wise, it’s [a] sort of meandering thing where everyone is floating about after the events that happen in Big Twenty, so it felt right to sandwich it with something a bit more final. I was really keen to have another 14 song album to make it seem really deliberate, but we finally realised sometimes less is more and chopped a couple of songs. Sell outs.
But there’s also been two years in between each album (Big Twenty was released in 2020, Soft Action in 2022, and now Dark Ageism in 2024). A lot can happen in a two year period, but you never really notice change, growth or regression when you’re living through it, so having those breaks feel almost like cut scenes - where are the characters now? What are they doing? Having those breaks makes it a lot easier to inspect and to compare where you find yourself.
HPF: The first single from Dark Ageism, Lifted Fingers, has a melodic and mellow vibe compared to the other two songs. And I only mean “mellow” in a relative sense: it’s still got plenty of tension and grangly sounds, especially once the spoken vocal by Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws comes in. I happened to read the lyrics to this one before I heard it and I loved that I could tell exactly where his part started. Something about putting crisp spoken parts over otherwise sung sections always gives me anxiety in an energizing way. Was that spoken part written specifically for Caws, or did it exist prior to his involvement? Well played either way.
CH: Lifted Fingers is about as singy as we ever get, so it was always the intention to thumb in some spoken word on that bridge to rough it up a little. As it happens Matthew has a voice like caramel, so it kinda ended up doing the opposite.
We wrote the part in the daft hope that Matthew might give it a go, so when I was penning the lyrics, I tried to keep things a whole lot more positive than the usual Other Half fare. He is such an incredibly warm person and it would have felt at odds with his character if we had him singing something about kicking heads in or stuffing drugs up his nose, so we settled on something nice about the magic of playing to 30 people in the back room of a pub, something which he watched us do when he came to see us play in Cambridge last year.
Because we are so badly organised, we waited ‘til the 11th hour to ask him to do the part, which miraculously he did between back-to-back tours. There is a version with me doing it somewhere, before we knew if Matthew was able or willing, and my god is it a downgrade.
[HPF] Farm Games, the second single from Dark Ageism, is hanging out at the corner of dirtypop and post-punk, giving me some Mclusky vibes in the verses. (Are there handclaps in there???) It makes me wanna wear my cutest polka dot bikini to the end times party. Musically I’m loving all the changes in this song.
“Because it’s been a horrid few years, trading joy for resentment/For anyone younger than me, still in love with the notion/Of a future that looks so big, it’s actually worth hanging around for”
HPF: I hear you loud and clear in looking at younger people as the ones who may still see a way forward in these times. I feel like people in their 30s right now, especially us overthinking creatives, are sandwiched in between an energized, productive younger generation and an older one who didn’t have smartphones in college and managed to escape with at least some semblance of sanity, whatever that means. You end this song by telling us to “regress like you mean it” over and over. What does that phrase mean to you? We’re all so tired. We need explicit instructions!
CH: I guess I’m trying to say whatever it is you do, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone, do it with a bit of feeling. The line comes after me detailing the time I had two wet dreams in one night, something I don’t think many people would want to shout about from the rooftops in their 30’s, but I guess the whole song is about just owning something, anything, as a route out of apathy. To be honest though, it’s a pretty contradictory song; a load of stuff about embracing your own shame, whilst slinging shit at kids for the crime of hope. Other Half are nothing if not hypocrites.
HPF: And finally the song I actually came here to review, Pastoral Existence, which was released just a bit over a week ago. This one makes me want to punch a hole through a mossy stone wall. Musically it’s right up my alley, with the drums and bass doing a lot of the heavy lifting so that the guitar can sneak up and spit beer in your face all wangly-jangly like. The lyrics to this one are heavy. We’ve got a little terrorizing, a little murder, as a treat. I hear a lot of frustrated rage, channeled into this idea of running away somewhere serene but not being able to avoid completely burning it down once you get there. Am I way off base? I'd love to hear where the inspiration for this one came from. And selfishly, where is that bass tone coming from? Pedals or amp head?
Yeah, you’re pretty spot on. I was becoming acutely aware that all our songs tend to be set in the same place, and so, like a shitty mid-series sitcom episode, I just decided to see what happens when I plonk these characters somewhere new. The answer is, exactly the same thing that always happens. They, willingly or unwillingly, are so stuck in their ways that even their quiet-life fantasies end up in the same violent cycles.
I’ve always been stuck between the push and pull of wanting both a quieter and more chaotic life. [HPF interjection: Is this man reading my diary???] Too much of one, just ends up stoking the other. Pastoral Existence is what having your cake and eating it looks like; a weird druggy daydream about upending and moving to the countryside whilst doubling down on all the nasty shit that usually populates an Other Half song.
Soapy our bassist (and for my money the best bassist in the world) plays a Fender Jazz, through a Trace Elliot head, with a Rat pedal on full whack the whole time. She also plays with her fingers, and really hard, so what you’re hearing is a combination of all those things. The bassline on Pastoral is about as simple as you can get, and does everything it needs to do, but elsewhere on the record Soapy really lets rip. Really think she carries this record actually, cheers Soaps.
Cheers Soaps, indeed! Man, it’s always a Rat that gets me. Why don’t I have a Rat yet? Stick around and you’ll catch me asking that every few months while I complain that my board is too cramped already.
Dark Ageism is out June 21st via Big Scary Monsters.
Bands I nominate for band friendship with Other Half:
~RMSC