Skunk Anansie

For Skin the past counts for nothing. Even when you’ve been a band for 30 years and history seems on your side. The Painful Truth is the sound of Skunk Anansie facing up who they are and what they want to become. It is more than an album title. It is a reality that they have lived through.

Individually and collectively, in the last five years they have been through a series of life-changing events. Like everyone else, they felt that Covid had disrupted then corrupted everything and changed the world.

A combination of parenthood, illness, and the departure of their longstanding manager seemed to conspire against them and add to their uncertainty, forcing singer Skin, guitarist Ace, bass player Cass and drummer Mark to question their place in the world as a band, as well as their own personal ambitions. For a while, they came close to calling it a day.

Not what you would expect from a band whose fierce determination, drive and resilience has defined so much of their career. And yet, that’s how they felt in late 2022 as they began to contemplate the prospect of making their seventh studio album.

Remarkably, their doubt percolated in the wake of a sold-out European tour, an appearance at London’s Meltdown Festival at curator Grace Jones’s personal request and a return to Glastonbury (the festival they headlined back in 1999 – their singer, Skin, famously being the first female black artist to do so). On the outside, everything looked good. On the inside, anxiety had set in.

Unsure of what to do, and failing to write on zoom, the four-piece retreated post-Covid to a farmhouse in Devon where amid frank conversations and home-cooked dinners, they slowly began collating their feelings into songs.

“We didn’t have a manager anymore so it was literally the four of us in a room without any interference and we got to know each other again. We’d done the Greatest Hits tour and we realised that things needed to change. If we didn’t do something fresh and forward thinking, we couldn’t really be a band anymore. We’d just be doing Skunk karaoke,” says Skin bluntly.

Listening to some of their most recent favourite records, they began throwing loose musical ideas around. Four of those ideas became proper songs. Reinvigorated and having fun again, the band also began to compile a shortlist of producers. Short being the operative word. The list consisted of one name: David Sitek of TV On The Radio fame, known for his production work with Foals, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Santigold, Solange, Weezer and Chelsea Wolfe.

“His name seemed to be on a lot of records that we liked. But none of the records sounded the same. The records all sounded fresh, but mainly the artists all sounded like themselves,” says Skin of the producer.

A call to Sitek’s management followed but not before a further round of doubt set in. “I was like ‘What if he doesn’t want to work with us? What if he doesn’t like our music? At one point it developed into full-on Imposter Syndrome!’” laughs Skin. “I thought we might not even hear back from him but we got a note back that said ‘I fucking love Skunk Anansie! They’re one of my favourite bands!’”

Despite his initial enthusiastic response, Sitek is a notorious task-master. A man with a meticulous ear for detail, he also has a general dislike of the ludicrous posturing you find in most rock bands. Thankfully, Skunk Anansie are not most rock bands. When the four band members sat down with David at his Federal Prism Studio in Los Angeles in September 2023 and told him they wanted to try a different approach to making music, he took them at their word.

“He basically reminded us that the process of making music didn’t need to be that complicated. When you start a band it never is, so it was a good reminder of that, and he got us to strip things right down,” says Ace.

Sitek began by informing the band not to bring any of their gear over from the UK to the studio. He also suggested they leave their preconceptions at the door. His less-is-more approach could not have come at a better time.

“Basically, we wanted to question everything and stop being comfortable. We really had to figure out a new sound. We had some ideas and they were quite radical. I had a David Bowie quote in mind: ‘If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area’,” explains the singer referring to the inspiration the band took from their late friend and former touring partner.

You only need to play ‘An Artist Is An Artist’, the opening track of The Painful Truth, to hear Skunk Anansie moving out of their comfort zone. Originally based around a trademarked, hulking Skunk riff, the band listened to Sitek as he reduced the tune to its most primal essence. Then, he decided that they needed to add a sax solo. “I fucking hate sax!” grimaces Skin, “then this really cool fucking dude walks in and played sax like I’ve never heard it before, and at that point my mantra became, just trust The Dave.”

Strangely, what should have felt uncomfortable sounds utterly natural. Tackling everything from ageism to our current need for approval in the digital age, ‘An Artist Is An Artist’ somehow seems to hark back to the band’s vitriolic debut single, ‘Little Baby Swastikkka’, in terms of its confrontational quality. It also reconfirms the fact that Skunk are part of Britain’s proud agit-pop lineage that extends back to The Slits, whilst also conjuring up the wordplay of Ian Dury.

“The great Dennis Bovell produced The Slits and Dave Sitek really loves dub. He spent a lot of time saying ‘Dub bass! Dub bass! Dub bass!’ to me, so that’s probably where that type of musical connection comes from,” smiles Cass.

“I loved the original riff to that song. It was great and it hurt to lose it, but he fucked off the great big riffs and just told us to trust him. And we did,” adds Skin. “Sometimes you have to give someone the space to be great and that’s what we did.”

Space is one of the major features of The Painful Truth. So too is the desire to create something that genuinely feels uncompromising. If the riffs have indeed been “fucked off”, then Ace’s guitar lines are somehow even more effective (check out his insidious melodic punctuation that transforms ‘Cheers’ into a genuine earworm).

“I don’t think I’ve ever played less guitar on an album! And lots of the things on there are one take. I’d offer to re-do things but Dave was happy with what I’d played straight off and he wanted to capture the vibe,” says Ace.

A muscular monster behind the kit, Mark Richardson also found the need to show a little more restraint this time around. “Dave wanted me to use a minimal kit and really play to the song. That’s probably the secret of the album as a whole. Everything is in service to the song,” says Mark.

The Painful Truth is an album where you can indeed feel the vibe – created as it was late at night with Skin and David Sitek swapping madcap ideas as they developed a collaborative working process. It is possibly more electronic compared to Skunk’s previous efforts. It is definitely more textured.

That said, the band’s knack for writing big pop songs remains undiminished. If anything, their hooks this time around are sharper and sink in quicker. The vocal-and-piano intro of the highly-charged ‘Lost And Found’ and the electronically-driven and chorus-heavy ‘Animal’ are proof of that, both tracks sitting comfortably alongside Skunk’s slew of Top 20 hits like ‘Weak’, ‘All I Want’, ‘Hedonism (Just Because It Feels Good)’, ‘Charlie Big Potato’ and ‘Brazen (Weep)’.

Lyrically too, Skin has refocussed how she writes on the ten tracks that make up The Painful Truth. ‘Shame’ sees her delving into her past in a manner that is raw and yet vulnerable in equal measure, while the provocative ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’ serves up a ball of sexual energy against an irresistible electro-riff and a shimmering sense of post-disco joy. Meanwhile, album closer, ‘Meltdown’, brings down the curtain with a moment of epic introspection where she holds forth on the illusionary benefits of material pleasures and the endless surface noise we all battle against in the modern world.

“This record is very emotional. But that’s the truth of it,” agrees Skin. “At no point did I feel safe, or comfortable with what we were doing, but that feeling became quite thrilling and addictive. In the end we just had to trust how it felt. And it feels really good.”

The Painful Truth is a radical record made for these uncertain times. Their first release on the newly formed FLG Records, and with new management in place, it also comes with a freshness that belies their storied career and previous multi-platinum achievements.

“We were looking for a new beginning, a new launch pad. You have to reach a point of expiration to get to that point and that’s what we did. It’s been a long time since we’ve finished a record where I play it back and I get goosebumps. But that’s what happens every time I hear Animal. It’s a beautiful thing,” adds Cass.

The final word, as ever, lies with Skin…

“Making this record was a very scary process and I didn’t think we’d end up getting the record that we did, but we just had to keep pushing, and pushing and pushing. All of us were in fear, all the time,” she admits. “When I really think about it, yes, we have made some good records in our time but it’s been a long time since we have made a great album. And that is the painful truth. Understanding that, led us to making what I genuinely think is our greatest record yet.”