For a new band heading to SXSW, it is probably the best opportunity to make a statement.
“Well, I mean, we’re playing lots and lots of gigs but for one of them we’re thinking of playing all of the album, in sequence. We’re not really sure what the effect of that will be,” says frontman and chief songwriter/guitarist, Jack Butler. It is sure to be a dramatic one.
Their brand of cryptic, undulating noir-electro rock is a demanding, stratospheric affair from the get-go. Collectively though, These New Puritans are a peculiar unit – talking in riddles about numbers and colours and doppelgangers, wrapping those riddles in abrasive and droning bass-lines and grubby, twitching guitars. It’s highly intelligent music that they don’t really care to explain but they don’t seem worried about the reaction, “We just do what we do and don’t really think about the audience.”
Butler possesses the kind of laxity that comes with confidence or arrogance – time will tell which. They’ve been quite vocal about their lack of concern for the word ‘influence’ but it’s impossible to avoid. Everything is apparent in their music from the Wu Tang Clan, The Fall, My Bloody Valentine: there is bound to be one morsel of sonic goodness offered by TNP for each and every person that watches them.
