Clash Music

The Young Knives

Dissecting the everyday with a slight sardonic twist

Henry Dartnell (singer/guitarist), his brother bassist/singer House of Lords (that’s Thomas Dartnell to his mum) and drummer Oliver Askew are the latest in the British rock canon to immortalise and dissect the everyday with a slightly sardonic twist. Take their flagship tune ‘Weekends And Bleak Days (Hot Summer)’, which perfectly encapsulates the numbing futility of a dead-end job and everything that sucks about working during the summertime. With its taut, repetitive guitar line and Henry’s clipped vocals, the song certainly owes a debt the jerky, minimalism of post-punk acts like Gang Of Four, but the three-piece are far from brazen copyists. Songs like ‘In The Pink’, ‘Tailor’ (an eerie ode to the dying art of a clothier), and ‘Another Hollow Line’ temper the jagged edges and falsetto yelps with the melancholy beauty of The Kinks and hints of Pavement’s off-kilter, lo-fi loveliness.