If only we could build a time machine to a time when UKs chart-topping indie scene had its darker, edgier younger brother, right? Not really, as its ugly head has been reemerging well the past few years, including Kent’s Indoor Pets. The shitty time of 2020 made them self-impose their own exile, but now they’re picking up the pace in this reaffirmed alt-rock landscape, both poppier and dirtier than ever, and it’s exactly the urgent grime-soaked sound you’d expect after musicians being put through the ringer by the pandemic.
Pathetic Apathetic, released through Alcopop! Records, is governed by the life and times of the working songwriter. Jamie Glass’ sardonic observations mimic influences ranging from Billy Corgan to Liam Gallagher, and bite through relationship highs and woes. It’s laid out pretty starkly on opener London (Love To Hate), the band’s home that—for all the Big Smoke’s opportunities—strangles many in the unaffordable everyday.
Glass’ love affair with the place is topsy turvy, sampling a TFL announcement before churning out melodic hooks with ease as the three instrumentalists switch through rumbling bass, crunchy guitars, something close to microtonal scale and even a breakdown. It’s quite the tube ride to emphatically drive home the capital’s nonsense (that coming from a Londoner) further on the whispery funk of Stink Eye (My Joy Is Irrational): “I’ve got a permit kink—the cost of living in my own head.”
The attachment to landscape is rocky, and that turbulence also makes its way into the record’s ‘love songs for humans’. Single Dopamine Girls, funnily surmised as a mixture of Britpop channelled through Limp Bizkit, is a barnstorming catchy earworm. With a fuzzed out vocal reminiscent of The Breeders’ Cannonball, it sees more vocal play parodying the nasally stylings of Gallagher as if, as Glass says, he fronted All Killer No Filler-era Sum 41. Lyrically taking on the throttling love song trope of crushing hard, the instruments go ham as too, while romance takes a dramatic gothic turn courtesy of a “psychopath in love” on Litmus Paper—“kissing all over, blissfully unaware I want to wear your skin”—and the animalistic bedfellow of electro-pop number You’re A Spinal Tap: “Grip me in your teeth, let it bleed, it tastes so bittersweet / I can’t pretend to be the piece of meat that you need.” Whether it’s London or a partner as the love interest, they’re always turned upside down to examine a darker underbelly.
If Indoor Pets made it a mission to detach themselves from any UK indie-rock label, they’ve certainly done well; the title track makes them sound like 924 Gilman regulars through rapidfire punkish riffs. Is that doo-wop, tambourines and mortgages we hear on Sadness Is A Phase? And for all the sprightly melodies being underpinned by the grunge, synthwave, ‘00s indie pep (Fidget Panic Restless Static), or Weezer-style power pop, the lyrical connective tissue is backed by playfulness from a band that’s carried off a return with bucketloads of gusto. Never mind about escaping big city doldrums; the sky should be the limit.
For fans of: PUP, Biffy Clyro, Puppy
‘Pathetic Apathetic’ by Indoor Pets is released on 10th May on Alcopop! Records.
Words by Elliot Burr
