GODSTICKS: BACK WITH A WINNER?
New LP, This Is What A Winner Looks Like, draws on pop music… and Breaking Bad.
Welsh prog rockers Godsticks will release their sixth studio album, This Is What A Winner Looks Like, on May 26 via Kscope. It follows February 2020’s Inescapable (which contains the band’s most-streamed song, Victim) and pulls from more electronic influences than anything they’ve done before.
“I really like the production values of pop music,” says singer, co-guitarist and principal songwriter, Darran Charles. “It’s really interesting what producers can create.Those soundscapes, synth sounds and drum loops are an art form in themselves, but often they’re frowned upon. Just because it wasn’t actually ‘performed’ doesn’t mean you don’t need musical intelligence to devise it.”
According to Charles, writing the new record was a more collaborative process than usual. The band started in September 2021, following Godsticks’ return to the stage. The pandemic had left Charles feeling creatively uninspired, and co-guitarist Gavin Bushell became more involved this time because, says Charles, “I found out he could do this [electronic] kind of stuff!”
The album was named This Is What A Winner Looks Like purely because Charles found the statement to be memorably hilarious. The lyrics were inspired by such TV shows as Succession and Breaking Bad, but the frontman’s hesitant to get into specifics. “I’m always more interested to hear how other people interpret things,” he tells us.
Following the release, Godsticks will play four headline shows in June: in Cardiff, London, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Dates and more on the album at www.godsticks.co.uk.