career Take A Melodic Approach To Post-Punk On New Single Microwave

That's The One: career - Microwave | London

London-based post-punk quartet career are embracing the monotony of displaced living as they usher new single Microwave out into the world.

Ripe with a jagged, demanding delivery, the new track marks the second single from the four-piece’s sophomore EP, Letting Out The Slack, due out Feb 5th.

Tinged with a comedic approach to songwriting, Microwave opens with a climbing, slow-paced guitar riff that crashes into the song’s main refrain of ‘my head feels like a microwave meal’, simple and to the point in intonation. Guitarist Jack Sutherland laughs as he explains “I was on stage at the Old Blue Last and for some reason, halfway through a song, that just came into my head… I think about my own anxieties a lot, and sometimes you get that feeling of like your head’s just being cooked. There’s a lot of external activity going on, but you might be a little bit cold in the middle of your brain - not really engaging with stuff”.

With a lot of post-punk swirling on the London scene at the moment, it feels like the most relatable lines don’t have to be complex, with straight-talking delivery a grittier charm of the genre. “It’s very on the nose as an analogy," he continues, "but yeah, being direct isn’t necessarily a bad thing”.

Whilst the genre has surely been seeing a resurgence in popularity over the last few years, career are intent on taking a more light-hearted, melodic approach, curating their own unique twist on a genre that’s, frankly, beginning to feel quite repetitive. Choosing to step away from the artists that Jack describes as “trying to sound like Mark E Smith from The Fall,” he notes “we were looking for bands who weren’t really doing that, and were maybe a bit more melodic”.

"I feel like so many bands kind of forget you can use your voice as an instrument"

Naming folk-rock group Fairport Convention and the more indie-led Parquet Courts as big inspirations, career’s playful approach to melody is keeping their heads above the noise.

“I feel like so many bands kind of forget you can use your voice as an instrument, and it can be another way to deal with melody and musicality. I think that’s kind of our biggest strength really”.

Microwave is out now via Bingo Records, listen on Spotify here.

Photo: Ilgaz

Illustration: @Alexandraisart