UK alt-punk/rock quintet Gen and the Degenerates were this magazine’s favourite band of the entire four day festival at The Great Escape in Brighton around a year ago, and made quite an impression with their incendiary set.
Wind forward to June 2024 and we caught up with the Liverpool band again in Nottingham for the final show on their sold out UK tour, and our view has not changed. One of the most exciting young bands of the moment, by far.
Genevieve Glynn-Reeves is a formidable lead singer and larger than life personality, joined by guitarists Sean Healand and Jacob Jones, Evan Reeve on drums and Jay Humphreys on bass.
The outfit dropped their fantastic fully formed 10-track debut album, “Anti-Fun Propaganda” on Marshall Records in Feb’, and it turned heads. Ours included. A bloody belter and heading for a slew of “Best Album Of 2024” end of year praise, we predict.
Recorded and produced by Ross Orton, who has worked his magic with Arctic Monkeys, Amyl and the Sniffers, Drenge and Gang of Four. “The album is a coming-of-age story seeing the band as both a tightly knit unit and as individuals. Find out who they are, and what they stand for. Late nights and early mornings, sexuality, gender politics and mortality, all while surviving your twenties in a volatile and confusing world fuelled by turmoil”.
The album draws from New York punk and post-punk sounds: “Think Patti Smith, LCD Soundsystem and Sonic Youth.” They do not take themselves too seriously and there’s chunks of wit and humour, amid wry observations on “the messiness of twenty-something life in a system stacked against you”. And the clue in the title says this lot love to have fun.
“We’re so excited that our weird little album is going out into the universe, and I am very proud of what we created together. It’s the perfect introduction to who we are as a band, and we can’t wait for everyone to get acquainted with our specific variety of strangeness,” said Gen as the album was released.
Over to Cambridge-born, Liverpool-based Gen for a track by track summary of the debut long player:
● “Kids Wanna Dance” sets the tone for the record. Dance through the end times.
● “Girls!” Fuck guys who say ‘I hate it when girls do X’, that shit is wack.
● “Anti-Fun Propaganda” the title track, silly, most punk track on the album. It’s sort of like
‘fuck capitalism’, but funny.
● “That’s Enough Internet For Today”. I think the title is fairly self-explanatory, don’t you?
● “All Figured Out”. This is the anthem for worrying if you’re on the right path at all in life,
and having no idea what’s going on. It’s about as earnest as we get. And it’s still kind
of silly.
● “Plan B (Interlude)”. My little acoustic moment. Marks the halfway point. Follows on
from the last song thematically. My family is from Cornwall and I sometimes wonder if
I should give it all up and go live by the sea.
● “Famous” the oldest song on the record. It’s about a relationship, but also about
glamorising the idea of chasing fame. It’s meant to be satirical.
● “BIG HIT SINGLE”. The record label asked us to write a hit. So we did. Literally.
● “Post-Cool”. I mean, I don’t even know really. I just like to be as silly as possible
sometimes. We all wear sunglasses when we play this live.
● “Jude’s Song”. I lied earlier; THIS is as earnest as we get, but in fairness it’s about my
auntie who passed away, so I think it’s earnt here. As much as it’s about grief, it’s a
celebration of life, and the time we get to spend with the people we love.
Why shark tattoos for you [Gen] and all of the band, while you were on a 19-date US tour with Flogging Molly this year? “Well, I love sharks, and we have a shark on our album cover, so it felt like an appropriate symbol to memorialise the US tour. We got them done in Tuscon, AZ, on one of the last dates of that tour, between sound checking for the show.”
Some lazy music writers may well ask a band or artist: “Describe your band’s sound for those who may not have heard you guys yet?”
Gen has the perfect response to that one: “Well, firstly, if you’ve not heard us, then what are you doing wasting your time reading this? Go get your headphones on. I promise we’re good. Secondly, I would say the sound is something like silly-chaotic-alt-pop-indie-post-punk for queer-rock’n’roll-aliens-who-like-to-dance.”
Gen is a skilfully versatile vocalist and for me, her style veers back to the likes of Siouxsie Soux, early Debbie Harry, The Runaways, The Slits, Elastica, The Cardigans and today’s crop such as Baby Queen and Gossip. But they deffo have their own thing going on and it straddles a retro sound combined with a snug fit to be on-trend today.
Ms. Genevieve is a real find. Her fabulous look, her vocal chops, her commanding presence and stage craft….and most definitely her unique song writing skills. Gen’s personal mission statement as regards her music and her music career is succinct: “Have fun. Ask questions. Try to leave things better than we found them.”
So after a sold out UK tour that just ended and the triumphant tour of the States are still fresh in their minds – Gen and the Degenerates previously toured with Skunk Anansie – what has been the most bizarre/unusual gig so far for you guys?
“The gig we always go back to as being strange is one from our earlier days when we played a small festival called Funk in the Forest out in the middle of nowhere in the forested hills of Wales. When we got there we realised it was basically on this rich family’s land in the forest, and one of the kids had decided he wanted to run a festival.
“So they’d dug a small quarry out of the hills on their land to put a stage, and found other spots for other stages. It was nice in theory, but so many small things felt so strange to us. We were driven over to the stage for our set by a literal 14-year-old in a jeep – with some pretty steep drops on either side. We feared for our lives. At one point we stumbled into one of the farmhouses and saw a pretty substantial gun collection!”
All musicians and artists store up vivid memories of good times, bad times and those rare “pinch me” moments where everything is awesome. So what does Gen recall as one of those moments in the band’s career so far?
“There’s been so many. I could name literally any given day on the Flogging Molly tour across the US. But you know what, actually I think I’ll say when we were flown out to play a show in Bari, Italy. It’s a small coastal city in the south of Italy. I don’t think they have too many gigs there. The show we played was a few miles drive out of the city, where they’d built a free-standing stage outside of a theatre, and we were headlining.
“After the soundcheck a thunderstorm started to blow in, we had no idea if the show was going to go ahead, and if it did, we had no idea if anyone would turn up. It was so far out of town, who would come all the way out here to watch a band they’ve never heard of?
“It was all kind of surreal. But in the end, the storm blew past and hundreds of people showed up out of the blue. And they were the best crowd we’ve ever played to, and it was the best show we’ve ever played. There was so much joy and energy and excitement in that space that night, it just felt unreal. Maybe not the craziest or most glamorous show or story, but one closest to our hearts.”
Gen’s ‘wish list’ for the future if she could order up the perfect career is pretty simple and pretty do-able methinks: “To be full time as a musician is basically the main thing. That’s the state of the music business at the moment, that the ‘perfect career’ is just one that actually pays you a living wage!
“But in terms of something less depressing and more far-flung, I would love to tour some further away places like Asia and Latin America. We all wanna see the world with this band.”
Gen’s top three influences she names as The B-52s, LCD Soundsystem and Chappell Roan.
What and when was the lightbulb moment when the light went on for you to want to be a singer and to have a life in music?
“There wasn’t really a single solid moment. Music’s always been in my life, and I’ve always sung and written songs. I kind of just ended up a certain distance down the path of being a musician, almost by accident. It was never really the plan. And then I was like, ‘fuck it, I’ve come this far.’ I think it’s been working out okay.” We do too, keep at it please…
1st June 2024: Bodega, Nottingham:
Live photos: Andrea Bottino [Bodega, Nottingham June 2024]
Live Photos: Alex Asprey [The Great Escape Festival, Brighton May 2023]
Band on picnic table photo: Derek Bremner
Fisheye lens shot [top of the page]: Liam Maxwell
Words: Steve Best
