The band has released its latest album, Songs for the Loveless (Detour Records), a collection that has a wide sonic range, from rousing classic rock, to quasi-goth to touches of country and blues, and lots of songs are hard to categorize even after listening to them several times. Throughout, even during its most fist-pumping moments, explorations of our species’darker sides abound.
The Liverpool-based combo is spearheaded by singer Stephen Lamb and bassist Martin Dempsey. Lamb and Dempsey talked to Garagerocktopia partly via phone and a little bit on a horrible connection on a social media messaging app. The two were at one of their favorite watering holes, tipping a glass there for the first time in weeks, as Liverpool, like so much of the rest of the world, was taking its first baby steps on the road to normality. Standing tall against technical difficulties, the two discussed the making of the new album.
“It was a ridiculously cheap album to make,” Dempsey revealed. “The album was a bit of a struggle because of lockdown, money constraints, what have you. We did it in people’s cellars and their back gardens, you name it, all the while choosing the technology we could get to in this lockdown period, so that’s why it’s cobbled together. Some of the mixes aren’t what we’d like them to be, so we put it together the best we could. Kind of a punk approach to it, if you will.”
A third pillar of the band’s sound is guitarist John Murray whose jagged guitar lines contribute in no small measure to both the music and the atmospherics of the band. The band also includes Claire Rogers on guitar, drummer John Lee Hase and Michael Livesley on keyboards.
Dempsey, who signed on to the band about six years ago, already had an impressive resume, most notably with The Yachts, a new wave/power pop band that’s a far cry from The Gentle Scars musically. In the late ‘70s-early ‘80s, The Yachts garnered attention on both sides of the Atlantic with a sound that today sounds less dated and robotic than most of the similar-styled music of that era. Dempsey told of taking in a Gentle Scars gig.
“I thought Steve was a great performer and had some interesting lyrics,” Dempsey recounted, “so we got to talking and I ended up joining the band.”
“When I first joined, it was quite punky. We were doing ‘I Want to be Your Dog,’ songs like that. I’m a big fan of bands like Television, The Residents, Captain Beefheart, bands like that. Steve is more a fan of Hanoi Rocks, so between us we cross a lot of genres, and John, the guitarist, is interested in Classic Rock but also bands like The Smiths, so between all of us, we have a very diverse palette to work from.”
Early in the interview, Lamb professed a love for “glammy, trashy bands” and his affinity for such becomes readily apparent in seeing his stage persona, easily accessed on YouTube. He has been a part of several bands in Liverpool, putting out a wide variety of music, and he is also a prolific writer. He has helmed The Gentle Scars for about 10 years all the while building a powerful glam/punk persona for himself.
“I thought I wasn’t a very good singer,” Lamb revealed, “so I thought I better start dressing up and jumping about, and maybe people wouldn’t know what I sound like. I was into Bowie, and Marc Bolan and Iggy Pop as well, so I thought, I’ll jump around a lot and dress up.”
“I thought I wasn’t a very good singer,” Lamb revealed, “so I thought I better start dressing up and jumping about, and maybe people wouldn’t know what I sound like. I was into Bowie, and Marc Bolan and Iggy Pop as well, so I thought, I’ll jump around a lot and dress up.”
By Lamb’s own admission, he may have taken the theatrics a little too far in a show just before the beginning of the pandemic lockdown.
“The last gig we played, it was a great gig and packed out,” Lamb explained, “so I decided to swing from the lighting rig and I fell about 15 feet onto concrete and smashed both wrists. I didn’t just break my wrists -- I smashed them into smithereens.”
“I had to hold the microphone for him because both hands were swelled,” added Dempsey. “A couple
of girls ran up on stage to take off his rings because his hands were swelling up. We came straight off stage after the show and went to the hospital.”
“For the last five months I haven’t been able to do anything anyway,” said Lamb. “I have been incapacitated. But luckily, we just got to concentrate on the album.”
Musically, the band is a bit tough to pigeonhole. Certainly, the sound most directly recalls New York proto- and early punk, especially Lou Reed and quite definitely the band Television. But there’s just a bit of a more barbed, first-wave punk element, as well as more than a bit of glam metal. Both Dempsey and Lamb made clear they’re just fine not fitting snugly into anybody’s preconceived box.
“We’ve got something that a lot of bands just don’t have in that we don’t fit neatly into any kind of genre,” Dempsey confirmed. “I think we do have depth and integrity, and hopefully there’s a market for us.”
For Lamb, appealing to a certain audience or the music’s ability to fit into a specific category neatly was hardly a consideration.
“A lot of bands will play, and being in LA, you’ve probably seen this, just to be a part of a scene,” Lamb said. “Bands like Sparks or Redd Kross, they just do their own thing, and whatever audience they attract, they attract. I think there’s a market for bands that are not easily labeled, people who like music but don’t like the mainstream and don’t like it being force-fed to them.”
About the worst thing you could say to Lamb and Dempsey is that their music is mainstream.
“My bone of contention with the whole of the world at the moment,” said Lamb, “is that music that once was only accessible to you by being part of a band or part of a tribe, that music is now accessible to everyone, over the internet or wherever. You don‘t have to put any work into having access to it or having the credibility to be a part of it.”
“We’re from a generation where you went to underground clubs, you got beat up when you went out. I was a 17 year-old goth type, getting the (blank) kicked out of me, you’d get battered, beat up because of the way you looked, but when you went to clubs, you felt part of something special.”
“It just astounds me that, for example, the gays have allowed the corporate coffee shops to have rainbow coffees and flags and the like. Most other people haven’t experienced any of the s*** that’s gone on or they’ve been through. They want to tell you they have gay friends or they watch gays on the telly. I think they should be told back ‘“(blank) off, we’re going underground, and you can go live in your normal, boring little world.”
“There were secret clubs with select groups of people, whether you were a mod, or a punk, or a gay, or whatever, and now that’s all gone. I just can’t believe you can go into Primark and buy a Pixies or a Nirvana t-shirt. And I know people who go to Primark and get their Ramones t-shirt, and I ask them, ‘do you like the Ramones?’ and they’re like ‘I don’t know who they are, I just bought this from Primark.’”
“I was watching some fashion designer on the telly and there was an interview and he said he just picked his designs from the research he’s done, and he’s never once experienced looking like a punk or a goth.”
All the expropriation and profit from marginalized communities seems to have re-ignited a fire for Lamb.
“I feel like I’m ready to fight the establishment again,” Lamb declared. “I don’t like a world where everyone just accepts everything. I’ve just decided we all need to go back underground. And it’s the same with our band, we want to pick clubs that aren’t in the trendy part of town, and just go there to play music that we like.”
Both Lamb and Dempsey establish, in many ways, that the band is not in the business of putting out pleasant ditties. Their embrace of the outer edges of society make that apparent, but so too, does their songcraft. With The Gentle Scars, the themes of each song are every bit as critical as the riffs, rhythms and basslines.
“I worked briefly in theater with a colleague whose bar, in fact, we’re in right now,” said Dempsey. “Steve has also done quite a lot of script writing, so he’s a very prolific writer. So what we do is come up with themes. We try to see what fits the theme of the song.”
As one might expect, those themes generally are not rainbows and unicorns. The band’s lyrics tackle subjects that aren’t gentle at all. “The Pusher,” for example, tells the story of a series of grisly – and ongoing – discoveries in not-so-distant Manchester.
“Over the last 10 years,” explained Lamb, “there’s been about 70 bodies pulled out of the canal which runs underground and has tunnels. It’s suspected to be the work of a serial killer who’s killing people coming out of the clubs. When we played it over there, the place just went mad.”
Another album highlight is “Lost Queens of Hollywood,” which sings about the gay culture of tinsel town, inspired by the legacies of Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift, two symbols of American masculinity forced to keep their orientations secret amidst the superficiality of ‘50s-early ’60 America.
Yet, both Dempsey and Lamb also expressed an admiration of American culture, but not the Leave-It-To-Beaver America with its oceans of white picket fences, but the marginalized underbelly of Naked City America, with its weird, edgy nooks and crannies hiding in the rusted and rotting parts of town a few blocks away.”
“I just want to live my life like I’m John Waters’ love child,” proclaimed Lamb. “I love American culture, things like hotel rooms and ‘Twin Peaks’ and red lights and dark alleys. David Lynch captures that quite well. The old America, Disney, pre-Motown, it’s just not that interesting to me.”
“I had to hold the microphone for him because both hands were swelled,” added Dempsey. “A couple
of girls ran up on stage to take off his rings because his hands were swelling up. We came straight off stage after the show and went to the hospital.”
“For the last five months I haven’t been able to do anything anyway,” said Lamb. “I have been incapacitated. But luckily, we just got to concentrate on the album.”
Musically, the band is a bit tough to pigeonhole. Certainly, the sound most directly recalls New York proto- and early punk, especially Lou Reed and quite definitely the band Television. But there’s just a bit of a more barbed, first-wave punk element, as well as more than a bit of glam metal. Both Dempsey and Lamb made clear they’re just fine not fitting snugly into anybody’s preconceived box. “We’ve got something that a lot of bands just don’t have in that we don’t fit neatly into any kind of genre,” Dempsey confirmed. “I think we do have depth and integrity, and hopefully there’s a market for us.”
For Lamb, appealing to a certain audience or the music’s ability to fit into a specific category neatly was hardly a consideration.
“A lot of bands will play, and being in LA, you’ve probably seen this, just to be a part of a scene,” Lamb said. “Bands like Sparks or Redd Kross, they just do their own thing, and whatever audience they attract, they attract. I think there’s a market for bands that are not easily labeled, people who like music but don’t like the mainstream and don’t like it being force-fed to them.”
About the worst thing you could say to Lamb and Dempsey is that their music is mainstream.
“My bone of contention with the whole of the world at the moment,” said Lamb, “is that music that once was only accessible to you by being part of a band or part of a tribe, that music is now accessible to everyone, over the internet or wherever. You don‘t have to put any work into having access to it or having the credibility to be a part of it.”
“We’re from a generation where you went to underground clubs, you got beat up when you went out. I was a 17 year-old goth type, getting the (blank) kicked out of me, you’d get battered, beat up because of the way you looked, but when you went to clubs, you felt part of something special.”
“It just astounds me that, for example, the gays have allowed the corporate coffee shops to have rainbow coffees and flags and the like. Most other people haven’t experienced any of the s*** that’s gone on or they’ve been through. They want to tell you they have gay friends or they watch gays on the telly. I think they should be told back ‘“(blank) off, we’re going underground, and you can go live in your normal, boring little world.”
“There were secret clubs with select groups of people, whether you were a mod, or a punk, or a gay, or whatever, and now that’s all gone. I just can’t believe you can go into Primark and buy a Pixies or a Nirvana t-shirt. And I know people who go to Primark and get their Ramones t-shirt, and I ask them, ‘do you like the Ramones?’ and they’re like ‘I don’t know who they are, I just bought this from Primark.’”
“I was watching some fashion designer on the telly and there was an interview and he said he just picked his designs from the research he’s done, and he’s never once experienced looking like a punk or a goth.”
All the expropriation and profit from marginalized communities seems to have re-ignited a fire for Lamb.
“I feel like I’m ready to fight the establishment again,” Lamb declared. “I don’t like a world where everyone just accepts everything. I’ve just decided we all need to go back underground. And it’s the same with our band, we want to pick clubs that aren’t in the trendy part of town, and just go there to play music that we like.”
Both Lamb and Dempsey establish, in many ways, that the band is not in the business of putting out pleasant ditties. Their embrace of the outer edges of society make that apparent, but so too, does their songcraft. With The Gentle Scars, the themes of each song are every bit as critical as the riffs, rhythms and basslines.
“I worked briefly in theater with a colleague whose bar, in fact, we’re in right now,” said Dempsey. “Steve has also done quite a lot of script writing, so he’s a very prolific writer. So what we do is come up with themes. We try to see what fits the theme of the song.”
As one might expect, those themes generally are not rainbows and unicorns. The band’s lyrics tackle subjects that aren’t gentle at all. “The Pusher,” for example, tells the story of a series of grisly – and ongoing – discoveries in not-so-distant Manchester.
“Over the last 10 years,” explained Lamb, “there’s been about 70 bodies pulled out of the canal which runs underground and has tunnels. It’s suspected to be the work of a serial killer who’s killing people coming out of the clubs. When we played it over there, the place just went mad.”
Yet, both Dempsey and Lamb also expressed an admiration of American culture, but not the Leave-It-To-Beaver America with its oceans of white picket fences, but the marginalized underbelly of Naked City America, with its weird, edgy nooks and crannies hiding in the rusted and rotting parts of town a few blocks away.”
“I just want to live my life like I’m John Waters’ love child,” proclaimed Lamb. “I love American culture, things like hotel rooms and ‘Twin Peaks’ and red lights and dark alleys. David Lynch captures that quite well. The old America, Disney, pre-Motown, it’s just not that interesting to me.”
Don't Forget to listen to Garagerocktopia Radio, alternating with Blue Mood, Tuesday nights on KUCR Radio, 88.3 FM Riverside, California, where you can hear artists like The Gentle Scars, plus many others who have appeared on our hallowed pages and whose music has inspired us. Can't tune in live? No problem! head over to Mixcloud and catch the show there.
We have some other features already in the works here at Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always, we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile here. Send us a line and we’ll talk.
Also, we do have a Facebook page for this blog. We don’t put personal stuff on it – no pictures of grandkids (which we don't have anyway) or our dinners or politics or anything like that. What we do post are announcements about upcoming features, maybe extra stuff about the bands, and any cool music, movies or TV Shows we stumble across that might have even the most tangential connection with the music featured here. While we don't spend all day thinking about it, we do like "likes" and "follows" on both Facebook and Mixcloud if you're so inclined ...
We have some other features already in the works here at Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always, we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile here. Send us a line and we’ll talk.
Also, we do have a Facebook page for this blog. We don’t put personal stuff on it – no pictures of grandkids (which we don't have anyway) or our dinners or politics or anything like that. What we do post are announcements about upcoming features, maybe extra stuff about the bands, and any cool music, movies or TV Shows we stumble across that might have even the most tangential connection with the music featured here. While we don't spend all day thinking about it, we do like "likes" and "follows" on both Facebook and Mixcloud if you're so inclined ...
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