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Black Skies In Broad Daylight by Living Things

Looking like three young Richard Ashcrofts and sounding like Ramones-crashing into-the-Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Living Things are here to take back rock and roll.

“...their rattle’n’drone LA sleaze rock is what rock’n’roll should be sounding like...” - NME.

When you grow up in a town where “everyone looks like the cast of Dawson’s Creek” life can be pretty unbearable for free thinking, spirited young people. For the Berlin Brothers Lillian, Bosh and Eve - three lads from small town St. Louis, Mo, USA - life became somewhat more tolerable when they found their outlet, forming their own band, the Living Things.

Inspired by politically active parents with a propensity for challenging the establishment, the brothers directed their energies into writing songs that asked some serious questions about the government, the establishment and religion. Fuelled by a diet of CNN, the internet and a resolve to make some changes, Living Things made it their manifesto to start asking questions.

Incendiary

Having relocated to L.A, the band showcased their incendiary lyrics and driving, growling gut-blues at a handful of gigs - and swiftly landed themselves a recording deal with the Dreamworks label.

Hooking up with legendary producer and Black Flag and Shellac front man Steve Albini (who’s worked with everyone from The Wedding Present, PJ Harvey to Brighton’s Electrelane), Living Things recorded their debut EP: Turn In Your Friends and Neighbours. Now the pair are following this up with their forthcoming full-length debut; Black Skies In Broad Daylight.

Their message couldn’t be clearer: “It feels like the world is coming apart at the seams right now” says Lillian. “Democracy – the idea of government of the people, by the people – has become null and void. If we stay in this suspended state, if we buy into the fear, we will have died before we ever lived”. U.S foreign affairs policy, the oil industry, religion, the police and the whole establishment are all up for serious debate here on Living Things debut album.

“Society is divided into two antagonistic factions: those who issue the orders and those who obey the orders. The problem is the grand issuers of the orders have abused their authority and have seduced society into abdicating their rights. It’s time to learn to recite your rights like the ABC’s and 123’s so you are aware of what you’re giving up.” So says Lillian Berlin, singer/guitarist/lyricist for Living Things,

170 BPM

The three brothers – Lillian, Eve and Bosh – have been playing together since their hands were big enough to hold an instrument, which gives their angst-ridden roar an organic relentlessness. In the early years, their father had a job laying carpet under the attractions at travelling carnivals, and the whole family would accompany him. The boys formed a three-piece and spent several summers gigging in parking lots next to the Ferris wheel. The main attraction was Bosh, a kindergartner dressed in an Angus Young-style schoolboy uniform, pushing the songs along at an incredible 170 beats per minute.

“We learned a bunch of covers, but I couldn’t sing, so I screamed the words,” says Lillian. “Nobody had any idea what we were playing ’cause we had the chords all wrong. We just started making stuff up to entertain people. That got my juices flowing for writing songs.

“We knew this older ‘block’ kid, as we liked to call him, who turned us on to a bunch of ’70s punk records and ’80s hardcore records and it was, like, ‘Wow! We can do this!’ It was such basic stuff, with a clear social message. But books, newspaper stands and billboards are what really inspire me to pick up my tape recorder and write a song.”

Lillian cites mainly literary figures as influences: Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Carroll, Nick Cave, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Michael Moore, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, William Blake, Anne Sexton and...CNN?

“Our mother was an activist of sorts, full of progressive ideas…” Lillian notes. “She was always challenging the establishment. She was the one who’d throw mash potatoes at the television during the evening news. So before I began my music, even in grade school, I had my philosophy and ethics in place.”

High school was not a comfortable environment for such a stubbornly free spirit. His brain alienated but otherwise clear, Lillian was given to reading books that weren’t assigned, refusing to read books that were assigned and resisting any labels of ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,’ with their concomitant prescription for Ritalin. “My mother said no to the drugs,” says Lillian. “She didn’t believe in it.”

"My mother said no to the drugs..."

Home wasn’t much easier than school. “We’d get grounded all the time for beating each other up,” says bassist Eve Berlin. “Our parents would send us to the basement because we’d ruin the upstairs, punching holes in the wall…We didn’t have anything to do down there except take out our instruments and jam.”

Playing together and apart in various formations, locations and desperation, the brothers Berlin finally united around their common disdain for the St. Louis scene, or lack thereof, and borrowed a car from a girlfriend to drive to Los Angeles in search of a record deal. They were young, they had a bunch of good songs, they were comfortable onstage, they were loud, and big record companies were sniffing the air and catching a distant whiff of socially conscious rock ’n’ roll preparing to storm the charts again.

A handful of gigs later, Living Things decided to go with DreamWorks Records, after meeting A&R exec Beth Halper, who signed them. They went to Chicago to record four tracks with Steve Albini that became their debut Turn In Your Friends & Neighbours EP - released in early 2003. It exposed guitars boiling like molten lava, a magma-down-the-mountain mercilessness in the bass and drums, and a vocal snarl with such conviction it feels like the entire volcano is about to blow. Shortly thereafter, they recorded basic tracks for the full-length album, also with Albini, then bought a big pile of recording equipment to finish it in the same sweaty St. Louis basement where they spent much of their time trying to dig a way out of their Maryland Heights neighbourhood.

The full track listing for Black Skies In Broad Daylight as follows:

Bombs Below
March In Daylight
End Gospel
New Year
No New Jesus
I Owe
Born Under The Gun
Dead Deer
Standard Oil Trust
Keep it ‘Til You Fold
On All Fours
For Tomorrow We Die
Body Worship
Target Fixation

“The whole time we were making the record we didn’t leave Steve Albini’s cave-like studio/home,” says Eve. “We were pretty detached from the outside, other than the morning newspaper, which we all read from top to bottom every day. It was nice not dealing with the everyday chaos that goes on; it gave you a different perspective when you’re looking out at it.”

Black Skies In Broad Daylight was preceded by the single, I Owe, in April, on CD and and 7” vinyl. The CD featured two versions of new tracks not appearing on the album, so it’s well worth hunting down. The tracks are: God Made Hate (Non-Movement mix) and No New Jesus (demo) plus the video for I Owe.

Black Skies In Broad Daylight is released on the Loog/Dreamworks label, 3 May.

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