We’ve realised that the monotony and routine of our daily lives can in fact be quite mundane when our freedom is suddenly swept out from beneath our feet. State Actors, the debut five track EP by Southsea based Young Pretorians harnesses these thoughts and emotions whilst turning them into something toe-tappingly beautiful.
Born from a misspent youth and fuelled by “cheap tequila and Ken’s fried chicken” the Portsmouth quartet formed in 2019, setting out to turn their coming of age struggles and twenty-somethings apathy into a creative art form. Their jaunty, gruff-punk / emo / rock /whatever you want to call it, blurs the lines and defies any one singular genre, effortlessly flowing back and forth between them.
Whilst tracks ‘Desperation Party Scene’ and “No One’s The Saint That They Want To Be” wear their influences on their sleeves – think Hot Water Music, The Gaslight Anthem, The Menzingers and those of their ilk – and prove to be brimming with catchy sing-a-longs and bouncy riffs, ‘Average Conversations, Between Average People’ shows a much more melancholic side to the band. A sudden change in pace when compared with the rest of the EP, ‘Average People…’ slows things down considerably, hammering home the song’s theme that much harder. “Find something that you’ll fight hard for, that makes you question what came before” croons frontman Pete Darwent, a line written with the intention of inspiring the listener to get up, get out and break free from that aforementioned monotony, a call to arms if you will, against life’s humdrum tediums.
Despite their obvious influences leaning heavier on musicians from the other side of the Atlantic, Young Pretorians manage to retain their ‘Britishness’ without falling foul of the ‘faux Americana’ traits that can so often consume other artists. “These are songs for everyone” the band state and though the lyrical content remains universal, there are some unmistakable elements of classic Brit Pop that shine through, further separating it from the pack when it comes to our colonial cousins in the West.
Bringing State Actors to its conclusion is ‘The Shakes’, the EP’s crescendo track, relying heavily on layered vocals and sing-a-longs which will prove a fan favourite once live gig settings are allowed to resume. Following the EP’s over-arching theme, “The Shakes is a song about working dead end jobs that grind you down over time and the realisation that you should be working for your own benefit, not someone else’s” Darwent comments. “As far as we know you only get one time around so you need to make sure you don’t waste it.”
It’s certainly hard to disagree, especially now with the lifting of restrictions just over the horizon and the world slowly beginning to resemble some sort of normality. Our time of forced-introspection appears to be coming to an end and besides channeling that frustration, Young Pretorians’ State Actors has proves itself to be as culturally relevant as it is poignant.