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Humour- A Small Crowd Gathered To Watch Me

Faith Hussain

Following on from the excitement of their 2022 EP pure misery, Humour are ready to share a brand new shiny EP. Faith Hussain explores their latest offering...


Humour, a Glasgow based post-punk band with many a thread of lyrical excellence, release their

latest EP A Small Crowd Gathered To Watch Me after months of anticipation. I’ve seen Humour live

a handful of times and seeing them in the flesh in mostly very intimate venues reinforces how

categorically Humour explore lyricism as the forefront of their music, with music appearing as

something to bolster Andreas’ narrative that reads like poetic fairytales.



Their latest EP of five tracks beautifully delves into this motif. Track 1, A Small Crowd Gathered To

Watch Me, is a completely fictional story Andreas contrived through the lens of an invented

character. The bass appears troubled and angrier than the other tracks on this EP, complimenting

Andreas’ jarring repeated screams of ‘I’d rather do it on Wednesday, fuck off’, connoting a sense of

instability within his character. The repetition of this lyric whispers to something limbo-like as his

character switches between down tempo explorations of his sensual fields, e.g. ‘jazz was the

soundtrack, yeah’ matched by the deceleration of the drums, and violently delves into a soliloquy

paced alongside the riveting appearance of bass that reminds me of something out of a tragic

Shakespeare play. It’s disjointed and brews insanity.

"The sense of instability is a key motif throughout these tracks, the lyricism evokes desperation"

All tracks in this EP have a similar melody overlapping across the songs, even the choruses feel

related but variants of eachother in terms of rhythm. The second track Wrangle, maybe my

favourite on the EP, is based on a real figure. After talking to Andreas about this, he explained it’s

about a polar explorer lost in the ice on Wrangle Island. The sense of instability is a key motif

throughout these tracks, the lyricism evokes desperation as he painstakingly exclaims “I want to get

old”. The track seems to follow his attempt to flee as the breaks in synth around the chorus allude to

his loss of time and struggle for survival whilst his thoughts fleet between personal and collateral-

“and my poor friends”. The recurrent heavy bass development in the chorus appears desperate as

our character gently yet painfully sings “Another 10 miles coming up I see it/ Another 10 miles

coming up, I see it”, inducing a perpetual structure in which the explorer’s attempt to escape the ice

seems boundless.



The third track, Big Money, again is about a real figure. Andreas explains he wrote it about a

greedy rubber tycoon. The beat immediately sounds sinister as the track jumps between aggressive

drumming and a more structured tempo to illustrate his desire for “land in the valley” and

exploitation of the indigenous people on this land. The break in lyricism in the song consists of

Andreas screeching and reminds me of a spoiled child’s demands. There absolutely is a sense of this

character trying to prove himself as he gobbles wealth by “killing with abandon” and destroying this

old world in the name of wealth; the slowing of the beat towards the end and trail off by the gentler

guitar to me suggests this character appears satisfied with murder.



Take a Look at my Tongue is jammier and more upbeat but again is about a real character- a soldier

whose face was destroyed in battle. It screams its verses in sparse typical Humour fashion, similar to

the second track the lyrics and guitar riffs are gentler when this character drifts into a feverish

realisation of his surroundings, seeing “Leopold riding in his dreams”. Gentler on verses, it breaks

into the grimly chorus of awareness of his body covered in blood exemplified in screams of pain by

Andreas. The second half of this track combines the singing of lyrics under shrieks that pierce with

agony as the character exclaims “take a look at my life… what do you mean it’s finished”, tackling his

mutilation through battle as the baseline propels to match the agony of his disfigurement.


The final track nods to the first track. Andreas explains this song is based on a fictional invented

character again, brewing insanity and acknowledging the theme of disfigurement and instability

within the other songs too. The Halfwit breaks up the melody and fractures the tempo completely

while drums merge in and out of the song when Andreas exclaims “I turned into a Halfwit” for the

first time while the character claws, searches, crawls into something subhuman. This track presents

insanity driven from loneliness, similar to the first track, yet this character appears foolishly careless

about his transformation. He “searches the graves” after clawing up from the ground and swims in

water “full of fish”, connoting the image of something devilish that he's mentally become. The last

lyrics are spoken; the melody again transforms to compliment the characters mutation as his “eyes

are open” as he sees “saints and hermits”, advancing that his arguably mental change is complete in

what reminds me of a purgatory like environment.


Humour tell the most poetic stories. In Andreas’ words, they “wanted the EP to give a series of

glimpses into these real or imaginary lives” and succeed they do, yet again.


Faith Hussain

 

Edited by Alice Beard


Images courtesy of Humour via Instagram (including official EP Cover), video courtesy of Humour on Youtube

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