| Track | Album |
|---|---|
| Organ Eternal | Field Of Reeds |
| We Want War | Hidden |
| Attack Music | Hidden |
| Wild Fields | Crooked Wing |
| Infinity Vibraphones | Inside The Rose |
| Spiral | Field Of Reeds |
| Fragment Two | Field Of Reeds |
| Three Thousand | Hidden |
| Swords Of Truth | Beat Pyramid |
| Waiting | Crooked Wing |
Photo: Jeremy Young. Licensed under Creative Commons.
For me, These New Puritans have been like a lover I dumped in my thirties because they were annoying, only to bump into them at a party in my fifties and find them so captivating that I ache to have them back.
When their first album, Beat Pyramid, came out in 2008 I latched on to the commotion surrounding the band and bought the album. A few listens proved it to be a bit shouty with some interesting ideas but nothing more. It was duly shelved under ‘T’ and only saw light when transferred from box to box in various house moves. Henceforth I followed the band’s progress from afar – notably in the odd casual listen to later albums my partner played when we were doing something else. I thought they were good, nothing more.
End of the Road festival, 2025. It’s Friday evening, the weather is apocalyptic and the toilets are, well, let’s just say I’m not very good with festival toilets. I wash my hands outside said facilities and see a man who has set up his deckchair in the toilet area. Some lads from Hartlepool are joking with him that it’s not exactly the best view in the festival. I leave the scene laughing to go in search of the best view the festival has to offer at this point, which turns out to be These New Puritans in the big top.
Nine songs later I’m wandering out of the tent, jaw slack, with the gig melting away to the looping refrain of Organ Eternal. I am in love. From now, every second not spent listening to, reading about, or at least talking about These New Puritans seems pointless and futile.
What did this to me? The main perpetrator was George Barnett’s drums, which thrum to a primal off-kilter beat, magnified by still more drums being played elsewhere on stage. There are also instruments I’ve never seen before in the context of a rock gig – a big frame with chimes hanging off it (later googling reveals these to be tubular bells) and am I imagining it or was there a bunch of chains hanging around just in case someone needed to resort to creating that oh-so-critical clanking chain sound? And then there’s the brooding swell of sound that simultaneously unnerves and enlivens the listener.
Embarrassingly, I came home to discover that the entire TNP back catalogue had been hiding in plain sight in my own home and I’ve spent the time since that concert making up for lost time, ingesting it greedily.
Why did it take me so long to see the light? I have my theories. First, TNP are not an easy listen. Singer/songwriter Jack Barnett has said he thinks the best music is always flawed. And, let’s face it, TNP have flaws aplenty – there’s dissonant, violent drumming; lots of droney bits; Barnett’s creaky voice; organs that belong in a Hammer horror movie; uncomfortable silences; choirboys; jarring note combinations; weird woodwind and off-the-wall sound effects. These do not combine to make coherent, serene music – it takes time and effort to understand the multitude of textures and appreciate how they all fit together: you really have to work at liking TNP. And second, let’s face it, their first album’s not really all that amazing: its main value lies in unpicking how These New Puritans used it as a springboard to reach their later, more sublime, heights. One day I might even forgive myself for writing it off.
As a newbie, my favourite tracks are evolving daily. But these ten have been those that have affected me most as I get to know this incredible band.
Organ Eternal, featuring a repeated piano/synth refrain akin to a 1970s TV theme tune by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, earns its place in my top ten by being the soundtrack to that Damascene moment at End of the Road. The recorded version also boasts squawking from a Harris hawk called Shiloh that the band invited into the studio expressly to record the sounds it made. Field Of Reeds, the title track from the album this appears on, also features the sound of the bird’s wings flapping. To a sane mind, this kind of behaviour seems like a lot of effort for relatively small gain, but in the context of These New Puritans it makes some kind of warped sense.
It’s the drums that do it for me and We Want War is the leading exponent of this sound. George Barnett’s drums are loud, loud, loud and relentless. Meanwhile his twin brother’s paranoid whispers about secret recordings made in the marsh, explode into an urgent screeching of ‘Let in, let out, let in, let out, let in’. It’s a song appropriate for these troubled times – World War III is coming out of the speakers and it’s flippin’ terrifying. I could listen to this song back-to-back for the rest of my life and still be surprised by it.
Attack Music is another great example of extreme drumming, the ‘boom, boom-boom boom’ sounding more like a weapon of mass destruction than percussion. Woodwind swirls between the gaps while schoolkids join the chorus ‘Brick in the Wall’ style. All this is nudged along by a jerky robotic sound. Put this on loud and let it make you dance in ways your body has never danced before.
If you’ve never heard TNP before and would like a taster, can I suggest Wild Fields as a good opening? It’s a fragile, haunting ballad that’s immediately loveable and catchy. Though, if you’re queasy about these things, it’s probably best to ignore that it’s sung atop the sound of being boiled alive in the gastric juices of a large reptile while listening to your house being knocked down. Who but the Barnett brothers would have thought these disparate noises would mesh together so well? I went through a phase of walking to work in the teeming Devon rain with this track on repeat, my smile so big that random soggy passersby mistook my sonic reveries for friendliness and greeted me cordially.
Just one of the great things about Infinity Vibraphones is that it is the same length as it takes me to walk to the top of our street. It’s also made me realise the vibraphone – something I thought was just some kind of glorified xylophone – is actually a distinctly different instrument. In the same way that I used to love that Spacemen 3 were such anoraks that they told you in the credits what make of guitar each member was playing, I welcome TNP’s insistence on giving you the exact details of what instruments are used (I especially like it when the credits just say something like ‘glass’ – how do you play glass?). For this song the bass takes centre stage, alongside cascades of chimes. Barnett’s voice turns dark and rich as he sings a brooding melody that wouldn’t sound out of place among the back catalogue of fellow Essexers, Depeche Mode.
There’s a video online of These New Puritans playing Spiral alongside an orchestra and a bunch of kids. I like to entertain myself with the idea of those kids wondering what the hell just happened to them and why they aren’t at home listening to whatever brand of bubblegum pop is in vogue at the moment. I really hope this formative experience affected them in a good way. The song is on 2013’s vaunted Field Of Reeds album, which took me a long time to appreciate properly, largely because a lot of it is too quiet to listen to while on the move. This song begins quiet in the mix with the sound of an incessantly creaking door, though on later reflection I wonder whether this is an appearance from the man with the lowest singing voice in the UK who was enlisted to sing on some tracks. The song builds slowly before a plaiting of elegiac woodwind emerges to steal the show in the last couple of minutes.
Fragment Two is unusual for a These New Puritans song in that it’s difficult to detect too many rough edges – a gentle melody is sung atop a piano and even the drums are subdued. Perhaps this allows the menace of the lyrics to come into focus, In crushed glass by the train line, There is something there … intones Barnett as you picture the figure coming out of the shadows.
It’s testimony to the impression made on me by the End of the Road set that five of these top ten songs were played in their nine-song set. Three Thousand was among these – a song that was made to be played live, preferably with a lot of very loud drums. A repeated refrain on an organ is accompanied by chanted lyrics, underpinned by injections of a low thrumming that pulses through the earth and up through the feet of the listener.
For me, Swords Of Truth is the pick of the songs on the first album. These New Puritans take their name from a Fall track and the misanthropic spectre of Mark E Smith looms large across this album, with many of the lyrics delivered in the great bard’s trademark style, albeit in an accent derived from the other end of the country. Yet the nascent TNP sound is also beginning to assert itself. This track announces its arrival with a stuttering rave-like synth outburst before the discordant drums and urgent lyrics take it in a punkier direction.
We’ve recently had a death in the family and conversations have occasionally turned morbid. In one such discussion I learn from my partner that he would play Waiting at my funeral. It features a ten-year-old choirboy, an organ and not a lot else. The lyrics centre on being buried and toiling in subterranean fields, but a choirboy can sing anything and still sound angelic, right? If she outlives me, even my mum (who inexplicably holds it against me for not marrying Aled Jones) would approve of its inclusion. Good though it is, it’s not this version that makes my top ten. Instead, I turn to the session the guys did for Gideon Coe in June ˈ25. With Jack’s world-weary vocals, the angel is plucked from the sky and beaten down into a desperate, broken man. It’s devastating. You might need to go as far back as Dante or Blake to find a finer treatise on heaven and hell than this diptych.
As I diligently swot up on the band, I discover that TNP have worked with Graham Sutton, him of Bark Psychosis, on three of their studio albums. Bark Psychosis were the second band I ever saw in my life (the first was less cool) and I cherish their small but perfectly formed back catalogue. The partnership makes perfect sense as TNP take up where the Barks left off, creating big, dreamy landscapes that push boundaries. That Bark Psychosis recorded Scum, a 21-minute song largely consisting of eerie sounds made inside a church, is completely in keeping with the TNP Blueprint.
I’m almost comedically devoted to Tindersticks, who have provided the soundtrack to most of my adult life. I thought they couldn’t be toppled, yet These New Puritans are currently running them very close. The listening experience is totally different: Tindersticks are the sound of curling up on the sofa with a duvet, a good book and a cat, whereas These New Puritans are more akin to a bracing walk on a blustery seafront. They’d be a refreshing addition to anyone’s record collection.
Johanna Breen lives in Exeter, UK. She likes dark, brooding music and anything with an East European bent.
TopperPost #1,196
The Nice
An outstanding band. I’ve struggled to persuade friends as to their excellence where people engaged with the first LP and came away, like you, not all that impressed – and in many ways, there is a parallel there with Radiohead whom they have admitted to being inspired by and whose “Pablo Honey” isn’t their best work. “Hidden” was a revelation of a second album and the standard has been very high since. The current release “Crooked Wing” may even be a career high – although debate will rage.
I remember listening to various albums as a naive teen, dreaming of a band that would sort of combine what I loved. Take production and sound seriously, have a wider (post-rock/art-rock) palette of instrumentation and influences; establish a thematic core while still maintaining a post-punk DIY attitude towards their craft. The answer to my wishes is, of course, found in Radioheads albums, and also in Bjork, among a few others. But there’s something in the directness in Jack’s writing and George’s drums, and also perhaps that they are my generation, that continues to hold my attention. They haven’t disappointed me since I first listened to En Papier on an early YouTube video. Far too many people are missing out on them!