Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Lead singer Thomas Gilling summarises the sound of their latest single using three songs
County Durham-based alternative indie four-piece Vice Killer release their new single The Red Sky. Recorded in Liverpool’s Motor Museum with Al Groves (Oasis, The 1975, Jake Bugg), the track with its groovy menace, Americana twang and soaring indie chorus is about the feeling you get when you’re down and out.
The band perform a free entry show at HMV Newcastle on Saturday 15th April and a headline show at Hartlepool’s IDOLS on Friday 12th May.
Here, lead singer Thomas Gilling tries to encapsulate the single’s sound using three other tracks…
Doves – Firesuite
Doves’ first album Lost Souls begins with an instrumental track called Firesuite, a haunting but soulful song with a simple descending chord pattern. When we started out as a band, we were right into them, we think they’re one of the best British bands ever. Our debut EP Alone, In This World was written at a time listening to this album, we used a lot of those chord patterns, with classic organ sounds and piano.
McCarthy – An M.P. Speaks
A band I became obsessed with when I started writing back in 2020 was McCarthy, a very political band from the 80s who wouldn’t please the masses by writing ‘silly love songs’…McCarthy followed on to be another one of my favourite bands ‘Stereolab’. This song tells the tale of an M.P. speaking to an innocent child, convincing them they mean well in the harsh decisions they make. Well, as we all know there’s never been any truth in that. The lyric ‘There’s vice everywhere’ is what eventually gave us the idea of naming the band Vice Killer.
King Krule – A Lizard State
I was very late to the party when it came to learning how to play guitar, but it was King Krule who gave me the motivation to do it. Behind all the sax, and the drums is his distinct choppy rhythm. Sometimes you don’t appreciate a guitarist’s rhythm playing until you see their live performance of a song. Lewy our drummer described my playing to be like a drummer on guitar, this was because of learning all those songs of Archy Marshal (King Krule).
