Interview: Skint and Demoralised make triumphant return to Dry Bar – February 18

By Ciji Singletary

Sheffield’s indie sons Skint and Demoralised made a triumphant return to Dry Bar on Saturday.

Rave reviews have been stacking up recently from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Q Magazine and The Sunday Times’ Culture and the six-piece have even made an appearance on ITV's Loose Women.

The band are based in Wakefield where the main indie venue shut down some time ago, which almost killed the scene – but things are looking up with new venues like Long Division.

Skint and Demoralised have taken a lot of inspiration from 1950s New Wave Cinema and ‘kitchen sink’ dramas. Their frontman, Matt Abbot, discovered the films after The Smiths frontman Morrissey’s interest in them.

Abbott points to the honesty found in those films to explain why he has ‘a genuine passion’ about them. “Kitchen sink dramas are not glamorous. It’s not about Mister Big Shot and who gets all the girls. They’re really honest,” he said.

Their newest album, This Sporting Life, is named after the 1969 kitchen sink drama based in Abbott’s hometown of Wakefield.

Although Abbott denounces the British National Party on stage and performed at Love Music Hate Racism back in April 2007, which is a music-oriented campaign created by the Anti-Nazi League and Unite Against Fascism, he says that his politics doesn’t enter much into the band’s music.

“I’m only 23. You don’t talk about what you don’t know. I think you have to be older to talk about politics in music,” he said.

Abbot prefers to keep his politics in his poetry. “In song it doesn’t work,” said Abbott. In between songs he performs his poems, such as the one he recited against the BNP at the gig, when people ‘are more likely to listen’.

Instead the band focuses on themes like love. “Love is something everyone can relate to. It transcends all barriers: if you’re rich in the US or poor in Argentina, fascist or socialist, everyone has experienced that,” the frontman said.

The band’s plans for 2012 include performing at the Leeds festival. If you missed them at Dry Bar, you can catch them there.