Gen And The Degenerates: A Spoonful Of Degenerates
If you don’t already know who GEN AND THE DEGENERATES are you’ve either been living under a rock or too ignorant to acknowledge their potential. But, if you’re an open minded individual who’s willing admit to their mistakes then you’ll come to love their scathing jabs and sarcasm that distil their work, built on the foundations of silliness and frustration this quintet make for a unique whimsy that relieves you of your worries. After being around for a few years now, touring with the likes of SKUNK ANANSIE and departing for the States with FLOGGING MOLLY, they release their debut album Anti-Fun Propaganda. Luckily enough we had the chance to sit with vocalist Genevieve Glynn-Reeves before the group jumped ship to America the following day.
Anti-Fun Propaganda is a raucous, eager and at times hilarious commentary of the world from GEN AND THE DEGENERATES, through the lens of Genevieve, whilst humour and sarcasm isn’t uncommon amongst songwriting, it’s clear that she pours that in from the essence of her personality. Immediately the atmosphere is loose and despite being linked through the screen, the air is relaxed. “I have a good mix of fun and anxiety. Right now I am really anxious, but I’m also excited. And I think there’s a really fine line between those two states,” they laugh reluctantly. “There’s this idea that I used to have, that if I just worked hard enough, eventually there would be these rewards and I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think you work hard. And then there’s more work. So I think what you have to do is you’ve got to make your life something that you can enjoy, you’ve got to set those boundaries and find that balance for yourself.”
But how do you make sense of your own life when collectively the world is in disarray, in such a state of horror that with each day comes more bad news on the timeline? Genevieve finds the middle ground with humour, the tongue in cheek attitude of the title track where she questions monogamy, laughable social media discourses and imperfections through the tumultuous track. Her personality is palpable throughout the debut and all of the fireworks of creativity that are set alight in her brain go off at once, still, during our chat she reels it in whilst her excitement is difficult to escape. Without bringing the conversation to a miserable halt, we ask if she is scared of the future, she admits “I think if anyone isn’t scared of the future, then they’re not paying attention and need to get scared. But that’s okay, if you can get past the fear, you can begin to find hope and take action.”
“A lot of the issues that we’re handling, some of them are just freakish, and some of them are a built in part of life that we can’t avoid like grief. But a lot of the issues that we’re facing today are rooted in how our society is structured,” She continues to take us down a rabbit hole of environmentalism slowly becoming profitable, capitalism wrapping its jaws around greener efforts until she reluctantly accepts with the statement, “I do think there’s hope, I don’t think it’s coming from a good place.”
Listening to Anti-Fun Propaganda you’ll find that grief is a theme that is encountered in a multitude of different ways, but the most obvious instance is during the closing track Jude’s Song, an ode to Genevieve’s late aunt. “People you love are going to die at some point like is the only way you wouldn’t experience it is if you died really young.” Pausing for a moment and delivering her next breathe with bluntness “and that’s not ideal.” Not being able to contain herself she chuckles. “It just felt like an important thing to include in this album, which is very much exploring, like what it’s like to be in your 20s during the current situation of a very unstable world to be coming of age in.”
She doesn’t deflect with humour, it’s more like seeing the gaps and embracing humour to the fullest “I think it can be a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down,” she explains. “I mean, I’m very tongue in cheek, like, as an entity. Humour can be like a really important part of enacting change. I think it can help us understand each other better, make sad things more poignant in art. You know, like a lot of people who work in really taxing jobs develop this dark sense of humour to help cope with it.”
When it’s time to drop the jokes, she has no issue with taking a serious note. “It just comes naturally. I think when something isn’t funny It isn’t funny.” And knows what it takes for change to happen. “That’s how I feel about, you know, grief. That’s how I feel about some of these big issues. I think yeah, I mean, there’s also just like, action is the best thing really, like, posting on social media is great, but also people need to be writing to their MP, volunteering and all of that, active stuff. There’s pressure for everyone to have a stance on everything. I think it should be absolutely acceptable to go. Look, I don’t understand this yet. I’m gonna go and do some research. Meanwhile, I’m going to focus on other things.”
For GEN AND THE DEGENERATES, it was focusing on creating a humorous album with alternative leanings, in spite of a world where every corner doom and gloom lurk. Granted when asked about why they made this album, she answers “I think we just fancied doing it.” But in danger of being too hilarious, she finishes with “we needed to find our sound and our identity as a band because we explored a lot of different genres and played around with different things which we had the privilege to do. So many labels these days, they just go online and they pick up whoever’s got the biggest audience. Which means a lot of bands don’t get time to develop and try things out. But we’re so lucky that Marshall gave us that time as a new young band!”
Anti-Fun Propaganda is out now via Marshall Records.
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