Following the release of their debut ‘Fiesta‘ at the end of 2022, Italian post-punk band Leatherettehave today shared the video for ‘Thin Ice‘, a turmoiled love song about taking risks and one of the album’s most distinctive tracks. “Musically, it’s a nervous mid-tempo post-punk-ska orchestral tune, sort of Talking Heads-esque. Lyrically, it is quite representative of our approach, both as people and as a band. An approach that can be summed up by the famous Winston Churchill’s quote: “If you’re going through hell, keep going”. We learnt, as musicians and young adults, that things tend not to work properly way more often than they do. But it’s not a big deal, It’s actually what makes life, love and art so special”.
The video, directed by Niccolò Bassetto, addresses delicate topics like fear, violence, obsessions and ambiguity with nonsense irony and punk insolence, by showing a nightmare in which the famous cartoon character Cookie Monster from Sesame Street becomes a sadistic kidnapper who tortures the band. In the final scene, Cookie Monster rebels against his puppet nature to become a puppeteer, guiding the musicians, transformed into puppets, through a desecrating “baptism by fire.”
Leatherette will be touring Europe and the UK in the Spring, including a show at London’s The Shacklewell Arms on 22nd March. Full dates are below:
15 March – Le Trokson – Lyon, France
17 March – Le Rockerill – Charleroi, France
18 March – Le Café de Paris – Paris, France
20 March – Le 3 Pièces Muzik’ Club – Rouen, France
21 March – The Crofters Rights – Bristol, UK
22 March – The Shacklewell Arms – London, UK
23 March – Golden Lion – Todmorden, UK
24 March – The Piper, Hastings, UK
25 March – Hot Box Live – Chelmsford, UK
26 March – The Peer Hat – Manchester, UK
28 March – Sonic Ballroom – Köln, Germany
29 March – Marie-Antionette – Berlin, Germany
31 March – Humbug – Basel, Switzerland
01 April – SAS – Delémont, Switzerland
Leatherette are, by their own description, “five shy guys who sometimes get off the stage and punch people,” a quintet whose car-crash of jagged noise, twisted love and dark, anguished melody has delivered a remarkable – and eminently combustible – debut album.
Leatherette recorded ‘Fiesta‘ “almost like a live album”, they say. The result is a sucker-punch of an LP: the sound of bruises, the sound of uncertainty, of anxiety, punctuated and punctured by explosions of cathartic violence, a voice pushed beyond any comfort zone and into the blood-red blossom of impassioned and empathetic saxophone. Simultaneously poetic, caterwauling, broken and beautiful.
The album title is “a reference to the bullfights in Pamplona,” the group say. It’s no empty metaphor. “Bullfight is a strange ritual,” they elaborate. “And we’re against bullfights, but they’re fascinating in an iconographic way. And also metaphorically, violence flows on both sides, but in a feastful way. It’s similar to a concert, really – you’re expressing violent things, in a physical way. And people react to that, which is wonderful, which is fantastic.”
The group are based in Bologna, but all hail from different towns in Italy. These five young men – singer/guitarist Michele, bassist Marco, drummer Francesco, guitarist Andrea and saxophonist Jacopo – are united by a profound need to make music, to express themselves naturally and honestly.
The group bonded over wildly differing influences – everything from midwestern emo gods American Football to Berlin-era Bowie, to James Chance & The Contortions, to rap and electronic music – to create a dense, passionate, articulate sound of their own.
You can file them near fiery post-punk kindreds like King Krule, Shame and Squid, or unhinged 90s noisers like Unwound or Hoover, or squalling No Wavers like James Chance, but the truth is there are few bands like Leatherette that walk this Earth.
Leatherette‘s debut album ‘Fiesta’ is out now on Bronson Recordings.
