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The Music
Instrumentally, ‘Crimestopping’ is a relentless rush of blood to the head, fusing guitars that glisten and dance through the mix with underlying electronic textures that bring a threatening presence to Bollards’ combative art-rock. Shadowed by an ingrained darkness in the track’s storytelling, the London quartet glide from a conventional arrangement to an immersive ending which takes the listener on a pilgrimage through the outfit’s electronic influences - sitting in perfect contrast to the subtle vocal hooks. The juxtaposition between the track’s spacious atmospheric moments, rubbery bass drive and possessed vocal energy descends down a rabbit hole into an alternative universe of progressive madcap-psychedelia.
The Quotes
Vocalist Jonny Dickens notes:
On the recording process:
“We went into the studio once again with our great friend James Traylen, who I think by now has earned the title of ‘long term collaborator’. There’s a lot of moving parts to this track, a lot of rhythms and melodies intersecting and overlapping each other but in a way that I would say feels quite rigid and calculated compared to ‘Plate Up’, for example. We wanted to capture a sort of disciplined, routine, monotony of everyday urban life rather than, for example, a more loose and carefree feeling that one might associate more with a sense of freedom.”
On the structure and journey:
“There is a clear shift in this song, lyrically and musically, about half way in. It’s a direct attempt to musically represent a sort of societal collapse or descent into unknown territory. AJ (synth and samples) brings in this crazy synth line that we internally refer to as ‘the matrix line’ (directly inspired by the music in the background of the nightclub scene in the first Matrix film), and things just get more and more chaotic from that point onwards. It is insanely fun to play live.”
The Video
Arriving with an accompanying music video which sees vocalist Jonny Dickens lost in a world of multi-level surveillance, a Big Brother-esque universe where it is unclear whether the protagonist is being policed or policing. The video conquers up an outward anxiety and tension which builds to the point where there is nothing left to do but run from the unfolding dystopian nightmare.
The Lyrics
'Crimestopping' asks questions of a society being encouraged to police itself, its communities and the most vulnerable. “It’s not deep dive, it’s not news night”, comments on an angle increasingly taken by the media and our governments to over analyse and remove the human from some of society’s most complex problems.
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Single
