‘Favours’ is the second album by nipaluna/Hobart post-punk group, Slag Queens.
It’s been a little over three years since Slag Queens released their debut LP You Can’t You Out Like That. In that time the world has changed – and so has the band. Founding members Lucinda Shannon and Claire Johnston moved south from Launceston to nipaluna/Hobart and started collaborating with Amber Perez-Wright (The Foxy Morons, Dolphin, Slumber) and Wesley Miles. Favours is the result of the last three years of songwriting and recording together.
Favours is full of noise and sad-guitars set against driving bass lines, beats and live drums. Reflecting on the album, bassist and lead singer, Lucinda Shannon, writes:
Sadly, while reading through my lyrics today with a compassionate eye I can feel the exhaustion and pessimism that’s been the wallpaper since 2020. I see it as a sense of claustrophobia at living in a shrinking world. This shrinking has sent me (and I doubt I am alone here) inward.
Looking at it [the album] now, I see and hear an older person, who was not able to reach that place of excitement for the possibilities of change. An older person who sees the work and can’t comprehend how to do it and so moves into a place of seeing things in single frames: the frame of the page, the window frame, the frame of the screen, a frame around possibility, a frame around time.
I write songs about break ups, books, and tv shows. This album is less about hope and being strong and bolshy in the face of the odds, and more about disillusion: pissy, listless distractions, parties that felt like a waste of time, dissatisfaction and spiritual discomfort – spiritual itchiness (also sometimes diagnosed as anxiety).
Angsty. Itchy. Frustrated. That’s how I describe this album. Even the last song, Hand of Favour, feels like I am telling you something that you already know and may leave you feeling restlessly bored. Like, duh, yes let’s rob the millionaires already. We know what needs to happen but not how to do it and so everything ends up feeling like armchair complaints. Even writing that now, I know it’s not the TRUTH. There are myriad revolutions happening all over the world. I’m sad because this record isn’t about them – but what it’s like to feel far away from them.
Favours was recorded and mixed by Jordan Marson at Studio HMY with additional recording by the band in various sharehouses across nipaluna/Hobart. Album art by Laura Gillam and music videos for ‘Excuses’ by Keith Deverell and ‘Dogs’ by Jo Shrimpton (Flare Productions).
Release: October 4th, Rough Skies Records