ABANDONED HARPS! PULP CONNECTIONS! BAS JAN TUNE IN TO THE ART-PUNK SPIRIT OF ’79
AS BAS JAN do their best Joy Division poses in the Enfield, north London branch of Pets At Home for the absurd low-rent video for At The Counter, singer Serafina Steer hits a defiant little epiphany: “I was afraid and then I knew,” she sings. “I’ve got nothing to prove, I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Crushed but defiant, the scratchy London foursome’s third album, Back To The
Swamp, takes Bas Jan’s Rough Trade ’79 sound into darker territory, Faith-era Cure greys muting some of the Tom Tom Club brights of 2018’s
Yes I Jan and 2022’s Baby U Know. Steer’s songs of road signs, burned witches and unexpected financial stability have a slightly giddy Scritti Politti quality – sparkling but unstable, forever in danger of arguing themselves out of existence – but at their core is a quiet determination to pursue a very individual vision.
“I don’t think it’s an unhappy record,” Steer tells MOJO. “I think it’s hopeful, strong, a bit conflicted. I guess we all come back to similar themes. A lot of the time I find I’m making things about change, letting go, transition, having to make difficult decisions where neither is necessarily ideal, juggling.”
First emerging as a singing harpist on 2007’s Cheap Demo Bad Science, Steer’s second LP – 2010’s excellent Change Is Good,
Change Is Good – gained support from Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, who produced 2013’s moody, magnificent The Moths Are Real. She was seemingly set for solo cultdom at that stage, but took a radical swerve in convening Bas Jan, the current iteration featuring her on bass and keyboards alongside fellow multiinstrumentalists Emma Smith, Charlie Stock and Rachel Horwood.
“Sitting at the harp and singing songs
“The harp was too drippy for my taste. So I stopped.” SERAFINA STEER, BAS JAN
didn’t feel like me at that point,” she explains. ”The band has made it possible to make music that is more fun or grown-up in some way. Somehow my writing specifically with the harp was too drippy or twee for my taste. So I stopped.”
After two albums of Delta 5-via-A Matter Of Life And Death floorfillers for Lost Map, Bas Jan have been picked up by a larger independent, Fire, for this new LP. “It’s really nice to have some budget for making things,” Steer says, but brilliant ideas continue to cost nothing, and Back
To The Swamp has plenty of those, even if Steer’s original mood board vision bears little resemblance to the finished record. “I had the title really early on, so I guess that brings to mind The Cramps, ’50s horror B-movies, the front cover of The Slits’
Cut album,” Steer says. “Unwillingly, it makes me think of Donald Trump.”
Whether Bas Jan want to drain their personal swamp is a moot point on a record that simultaneously yearns for order and pines for drama, though
Steer would certainly not rule out a bit of light
Trump-ish world domination if the opportunity arose. “We would like to travel the world and bring about a historic shift in global politics,” she says of Bas Jan’s future plans.
Feeling the fear – a bit – but doing it anyway.
Bas Jan’s Back To The Swamp is out November 10 on Fire.