Close to the end of ‘My Life in Bins’, track eight on Leeds noise rock trio Irk’s stellar new record The Seeing House comes the couplet:
“Contemplation as a comorbidity. Abdicating in the light of abject despair.”
Some necessary context: ‘My Life in Bins’ expends much of its lyric sketching out a specific vision of exactly “abject despair”.
It is a sweeping, social vision, communicated through resonant, often surreal imagery
that conveys horribly well an impression of the intertwined bleakness and strangeness that can characterise contemporary society and life within it. It is a world of “sweet wind broadcasting static to languid throngs at the door”, of “unused scratch cards floating in the tailings pond”, of “a big bin full of flowers”, and where “reinforced concrete waits its turn like a good dog” inside the “public transport leviathan” (if these images don’t in fact resonate so well, you might do well to spend more time in West Yorkshire). The point being: that “contemplation” which Irk’s vocalist Jack Gordon decries the pathologisation of is not unhealthy rumination (or whatever) but the perception and comprehension of a fucked world (or at least of a world’s fucked bits).
This sentiment, captured in that couplet, might be taken as one of the central ideals of Irk’s project,
across its twelve years of existence; absolute rejection of the pathologisation of seeing, of thinking
through, of chewing over the worst bits of the world – a commitment not to abdicate from thought
in that “light of abject despair”, but to stare the world unflinchingly in its face, and ultimately to re-
present it digested…in song.
Specifically, those songs have mined a singular strain of vociferous heavy experimental rock.
At the heart of the basic formula of Irk’s sound is an engagement of elements from noise rock in the
strain of groups such as Shellac and The Jesus Lizard. Ed Snell’s bass work trades in muscular, heavily distorted riffing that flirts with and subverts rock norms. Matthew Deamer’ drumming is hard, thoughtful but never baroque. Gordon’s vocal delivery is typically sardonic, and shifts between theatrical sprechgesang and harrowing shrieks. There is a focus on groove.
This soundworld is, however, then deployed into a compositional approach that draws much too
from mathcore and heavy music’s more experimental edges. In Irk’s work there is none of the
languor that might be taken as typical of noise rock even at its most ferocious, but a frenetic energy
and an anxious tightness, even in tracks’ most sparse moments. Rhythmic complexity abounds (use
of odd metres, jagged and complex rhythms, erratic rhythmic switch-ups), though this never
undermines grooves but, in fact, often deepens them.
On 2014’s Bread and Honey EP can be heard, already very clearly worked out, what is perhaps the
foundational meat of Irk’s music: putting this mathematized noise rock to work in brief-ish,
pulverising tracks. The darknesses which Gordon interrogates across the EP’s lyrics too track to what
is arguably also a foundational approach across Irk’s oeuvre: working to stare the world in its face by
specifically probing the ugliness of the personal and connecting it up to the general, reading what in
it is universal, of the world – but in a way that doesn’t apologise for the horror and curiousity of the
former. On ‘Care Taker’, Gordon asks “Can you smell the carrion?/ Can you taste the salty earth”
immediately before “Is there sadness in your house?/ Are you running late for work?”; domestic
crisis and minor personal struggle are recognised and noted as instantiations of a broader, primal
suffering – a man in pain is an animal in pain, even if he is wearing a suit and tie.
The group’s 2015 split with fellow Leeds-based noise crew Wren saw some experimentation with
this basic format. It introduced longer tracks, spacious though no less oppressive, seeing intensity
delivered, alongside acute moments, in a more kneaded-out manner, (see: ‘You Sound Like My Ex-
Wife’). Included too was ‘Life Pervert’, a track of curdling spoken-word accompanied only by
nauseating, miasmatic ambience. The brief, crushing tracks and moments feel confident
explorations in the format, figuring out creative and intelligent ways of delivering the group’s frantic
force (‘A Dead Elephant’). Gordon’s lyrics embraced further yet literary invention and strange, dark
humour, which ‘Life Pervert’ exemplifies well, its lyrics a panic-inducing, Beckettian prose-poem
reflecting on existence in a grimly uncanny register of weird, slurried grammar and odd, fragmented
phrases.
Recipes from the Bible, Irk’s 2018 debut LP, too featured both short form and long form tracks of a further levelled-up quality, as well as experimentations in form and sound such as standout ‘You’re My Germ’, a sinister, journeying track of sax-laced art rock propelled by a string of bass lines as funky
as they are menacing. ‘The Seeing House’, Irk’s fantastic latest LP, continues this trajectory of
pushing the boat out, expanding the group’s sound while honing the foundations developed thus far.
A number of tracks deliver excellent and creative renditions of the foundational Irk sound. ‘Idiot Plot’
and ‘Love Is A Windsock’ offer unrelenting barrages of low slung riffs, which slip, across complex
structures, into sections of equally visceral groove. ‘Abraxas Casino’, clocking in at 1m19s, is wildly
detailed for its unbelievably brief length, offering grinding breakdown after grinding breakdown
before a momentary, slight sparseness leads into a final, spiked assault. ‘The Finer Things In Life’
brings a chunk of its pummelling in disorienting 7/8 time, before deviating into hymnal, elegiac art
rock weirdness, somewhat a la Cardiacs, eventually coming down into a crushing, funereal close.
Irk’s longer, less directly intense sound is also given inventive exploration. ‘Eating All Of The Apple’,
offering no payoff across its nearly 5 minute length, every build leading only to a new plateau, is an
exercise in the suffocations of restraint. Discordant horror-movie strings slink around ‘Lifetime
Achievement Award’, a 7 minute composition that precedes its more classically Irk-ish latter half
with a quiet opening, Gordon’s singing supported by uneasy atmospherics, and a bizarrely sparse 5/4
groove in the drums that unsettles against the leading 3/4 of the vocals and gently murky bass.
The record, too, features ventures into sounds new to Irk. ‘The Great Wasp Of Reluctance’, the
records most tightly groove-focussed number slinks into a closing section which sees group-vocals
cultishly chanting a mad refrain. The engine of ‘Wedding, Berlin’, for much of its run time, is a
sequence of strange and aggressive bass parts that sound like a Korn slap riff dangled in slime,
repeating mechanically, occasionally subtly varied; after a break, in which the bass gives way to a
mangled field of clanking percussion, the track hits a climax, driven again by belligerent bass which
this time comes sounding dissonant and somehow rubbery – it is all very uncanny, and tantalisingly
offputting.
‘The Seeing House’ represents Gordon’s best work thus far as a performer and a lyricist. A deeply
impressive, literary command of language has been wielded, it feels, with care and precision to
produce lyrics which are not only each remarkable, individual works but which cohere to profound
effect. Across the record, the approach of staring personal darknesses in the face and connecting
them up to the general is pursued, though, the general in question is perhaps more frequently the
socio-political than on any of Irk’s work thus far. Concern is overwhelmingly with the modern world
and the horrors and unpleasantnesses it foists, with much specific concern around alienation.
To this end, Gordon makes use of the literary technique – much used in Irk’s work and a classic to the
noise rock genre – of conjuring up characters to be either inhabited or addressed. While the noise
rock character mould is followed on the record with respect of the characters being morbid,
disturbed types, they feel singularly to be ‘kinds of guy’: archetypal, speaking to some social pattern
– this is often how they manage to speak not only to their particular case, but to the general also.
‘The Finer Things In Life’ offers a very funny and oddly relatable character sketch of a man alienated
from his true wants by a concern with status and social performance, ignoring the pleas of the “rat in
[his] belly” and confusedly, entertaining emotional investments in stupid shit (an alleged past
friendship with Sting; Elvis being buried in Hartlepool). ‘Love Is A Windsock’ offers glimpses of a man
alienated from meaningful romantic intimacy by excessive concerns about himself, distracted from
what is in front of his eyes by worries about whether his hair and face look alright, whether his
“capital is at risk”; what could be had is majestic but the result is ultimately only that, as Gordon
shrieks, “its just nice”. On ‘Eating All Of The Apple’, different ‘kinds of guy’ tumble together in a
collaged impression of the 21 st century political bastard; the thinktank psycho, the malignant
populist, the opportunist willing to embrace fascism – all are revealed as different sides of the same
horrid shape.
Much of Gordon’s lyrics also deal in pontification, giving pulpit-ish dispensations about the subject at
hand. Where this is the case, however, it is practically never delivered without some healthy dose of
bathos, re-mooring any lofty philosophising to the dirty old world which it is ultimately purposed to
explain. The lines that opened this review – “Contemplation as a comorbidity. Abdicating in the light
of abject despair.” – are shortly followed by “I am a sexy taxpayer!”; bringing the reflection back
down to the earth of its original themes (the grimness of life under the modern state) with a
ridiculousness that accentuates the effect powerfully. Such jarring juxtapositions are peppered
across the record, serving a purpose the inverse of Gordon’s ‘kinds of guy’ – to connect the general
back down to the particular.
The effect of this cohesive general approach in the record’s lyricism is that, in listening through the
individually impressive literary episodes presented across the tracks, a profound sense of worldview
emerges – a way of perceiving our world, of making sense of it. Through its willingness to stare the
world in its face (and its skill in the representation of what it finds when it does) Gordon’s lyricism,
underpinned fantastically by the musical work of Deamer and Snell, well assists the listener in doing
the same. It is a wonderful thing to have art this profound – and what a treat that it is also so much
fun.
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