Eyesore & The Jinx – “Leisure Time”
With their first couple singles, the Liverpool post-punk trio Eyesore & The Jinx had already started to garner some buzz in their home country. There’s a whole new wave of addicting young guitar bands coming out of the UK and Ireland right now, each with their own little interpretation of post-punk or art-rock or some classic era of indie. Eyesore & The Jinx — made up of Josh Miller (vocals, bass), Liam Bates (guitar), and Eoghan Robinson (drums) — have thus far built their reputation on sneering, fast little screeds about the ills of modern Britain. And now they’re back with a new song that suggests their character sketches are getting sharper as their songwriting expands.
That new single is called “Leisure Time,” and even if you liked its predecessors, it’s hard not to hear the song as the beginning of a level up for Eyesore & The Jinx. Produced by Daniel Fox — who, in addition to playing in Girl Band, also has production credits with artists like Silverbacks and Paddy Hanna — “Leisure Time” has a clarity to it that allows the trio’s newfound sense of dynamics and build-release tension to shine. (Fox first teamed with Eyesore for “Swill” earlier this year, and the collaboration went so smoothly they quickly regrouped for “Leisure Time” and the trio’s forthcoming EP.) From verses built on tightened rhythms that somehow also suggest a drunken stumble, the song repeatedly ruptures into a chorus you could take a couple different ways. Thematically speaking, Miller’s inhabiting a reprehensible character, and the song’s lurching shifts play out as a self-lacerating vignette of British identity.
Here’s what Miller had to say about the track:
From the perspective of an unhinged holiday maker, “Leisure Time” points a greasy, heavily lotioned finger at the carefree nature of the British expat. Whose enduring commitment to enjoying themselves, at the expense of other cultures, remains as visible and as grotesque as ever. It is, in short, a sun-stroked blather on the most miserable of holidays.
Imbued with the spirit of an ever-increasing, and continually justifiable Anglophobia, “Leisure Time” does nothing to dispel the myths of the Brit abroad. Instead, it stomps, flat-footed, through its two minutes and 54 seconds with all the irritability of a speedo’d England fan, in Mediterranean heat.
Miller’s got quite a vivid character there, and you can already picture said character in a sequence effectively and sardonically soundtracked by “Leisure Time.” It’s a nervy, wiry composition that splits the difference between the funkier outliers of post-punk and a caustic Britpop deep cut. Miller shouting “Leisure time!” in the chorus especially conjures the latter, as if the single’s fake-neon cover denotes a seedier short story from the world of Parklife. Check it out below.
“Leisure Time” is out now via Eggy Records. Get it here.
