This’ll be a quick one. I’m pressed for time but don’t want to miss another day.
Cardboard‘s “Wouldn’t Let You Realise” (up top) hit my radar a week or so ago via this piece in So Young. There’s not a whole lot to know about them. The band is made up of four dudes from London who sound like they found a copy of Ace of Spades at a thrift shop and played it to death. They’ve got three singles out on streaming right now, and they all go hard, if a little differently.
Their debut single from last June is called “The General”, sounds like Lemmy had a hand in it for sure:
At times they sound a little like Tricky Woo or The Mooney Suzuki, with a swagger stolen from a band that’s been around a lot longer.
The story of the band is a modern take on punk lore: four teenagers furious at the hypocrisy they see around them:
…had their teenage years snatched from under their noses by a government who fined students into near-bankruptcy for breaking self-isolation rules while parties carried on in Downing Street and elsewhere. “Fuck, man. I don’t know why people aren’t more angry about it,” says singer and guitarist Daniel Hacker. “It’s just criminal.”
Cast adrift in a world of isolation, alienation and seemingly endless restrictions, the four musicians, who are still in their teens, decided that there were better ways to plunge themselves into a lifetime of debt than going to uni.
Here’s “Pipe Dream”, their second single from last November, which is almost chill compared to the other songs:
Their Bandcamp page has a couple older songs that are just as high-energy as these. Cardboard is playing a ton around the UK these days – someday I’ll plan a trip to London, but until then I’ll be keeping watch for a Lou Smith video.
Further reading
Cardboard is a in this article about a new venue/record label called Far From.
