Meet the Dorset band who channelled lockdown frustration into bursts of pop-punk catharsis.
ONE PERSON’S CRISIS is another’s opportunity. Or so it proved for the Bournemouth musician known to his friends as Andy Smooth, when he found his regular gigs in local cover bands drying up as the pandemic shut down the live entertainment scene in the spring of 2020.
While many bands and others in the music industry were forced to press the pause button on their career, Smooth (aka Andy Leslie-Smith) realised the time was right for him to fulfil a long-held ambition to make a self-written record. “I was bored,” he says. “So I wrote an album, and kind of made it on my own.” The result was the debut album by Skinny Knowledge, Don’t Turn Out The Lights, a refreshingly raw blast of high-octane, melodically charged punk-pop featuring stompers such as I Wonder.
“Then as I was putting it together, I thought I’d love to go out and play these songs,” Smooth adds. “So I put a band together.”
Skinny Knowledge have been gigging for two years now, and have evolved into the current quartet, who have now made an even better follow-up, this time as more of a collective endeavour. Twentytwo (so titled because Smooth sees it as something of a diary of his 2022) is boosted by the more polished performances of guitarist Max Harris, bassist Rab McGowan and drummer Mike Rigler, plus the co-writing contributions of Smooth’s friend Matt Bigland, of Leeds trio Dinosaur Pile-up. It’s a heavier affair than Don’t Turn Out The Lights, and opening track I Wanna Rock’n’roll and the equally ebullient, Queens-style rush of Disobey set out the band’s stall, both seeming to express the glorious release of being freed, from lockdown from restrictions, to rock with fresh abandon.
