Will Marshall
It might not be readily apparent on the surface, but there’s a lot of AC/DC’s DNA in unpeople, not least because there are at least two huge fans in the band. Rising from the ashes of members’ previous projects, unpeople immediately caught attention by their hook-forward approach that melded massive riffs, even bigger choruses and multipart vocal harmonies, straddling the line between huge arena rock and thunderous metal. Their self-titled EP was the opening salvo, and two years later, we are unpeople has emerged as their much-anticipated debut album.
Fans will already be familiar with the opening triple-hitter of ‘clouds’, ‘friends’ and ‘the garden’.In fact, if you’ve seen unpeople live over the past couple of years, you’ll also have heard ‘swallow’ and ‘bottle it’, songs that find their final form here. Let’s not beat around the bush, either; all of these songs slap. The riff that kicks off ‘clouds’ proper is a stomper, with drummer Richie Rayner underscoring it with a simple, driving rhythm. It holds a secret, though; not only is this an arena-filling banger, but they briefly channel their inner Devin Townsend during a furious breakdown with honest-to-god blastbeats and vitriolic screams from guitarist Jake Crawford.
Following it with ‘friends’ is an easy choice to keep the energy up, a bellow-along refrain of “Now that I know I don’t wanna be friends”, harmonising background melodies from guitarist Luke Caley and bassist Em Lodge. ‘the garden’ remains a world-beating banger and hasn’t lost any of its impact even if we don’t get the riff coming back but faster as they do live. First unreleased song proper (though, again, one that’s been played live) ‘swallow’ features some spoken-word vocals initially, a punk affectation that’s soon overpowered as the song blossoms into yet another huge chorus with glorious multi-part harmonies.
It’s impressive that for such a young band, they’ve already established not a formula but a sonic identity that we are unpeople cleaves to throughout. There are plenty of different influences thrown in from the likes of British alt-rock legends Reuben (there is, after all, a song called ‘kangareuben’ that very much channels them, and they have covered Blamethrower at shows), the aforementioned Devin Townsend and this is truly where the AC/DC DNA shines. While the former kept to a particular formula over many albums, what unpeople do is to simply take whatever they want and make it sound like them.
In fact, at no point does we are unpeople sound like anything other than unpeople and though their name is taken from Orwell’s 1984 – an unperson being someone who has been killed by the totalitarian state and had all records of them expunged, thus making it a crime to talk about them – the music is gloriously summery and positive. This is deliberate, even if the lyrics themselves often deal with topics ranging from social issues to mental health: see ‘waste’, in which the band sing “Shoot yourself in the foot with the starting gun / Good going / Running a race that you know just can’t be won”, or the aforementioned ‘friends’.
The juxtaposition, and their stated desire to invert the “unperson” into something far more inclusive, goes a long way. They revel in it instead, wanting people to understand we all have more in common than we do that sets us apart. This is raucous, feel good music to dance to at the end of the world – or just lose your shit in a festival field to. To quote their own mantra from each show – we are unpeople, you are unpeople, we are all unpeople. Now put the album on, turn it up, and most of all, have fun with one of Britain’s best new bands.