WHEN YOU STOP MOVING, if you can stop, during a Gut Health song, you’ll notice this, this odd thing about the none-more-compelling frontwoman Athina Uh oh (yes, that’s how it’s written; yes, we’ll get to that later.), and it’s not her movement. Though that grabs your attention like someone slapping you awake.
After the in-your-face cold funk bass of Adam Markmann and the snap-shut drums of Myka Wallace (and sometimes Angus Fletcher on percussion); after the wired guitars of Eloise Murphy-Hill and Dom Wilmott and the pinched probing synths of Fletcher (and Wilmott) there are Uh oh’s punchy, sharp, sinuous lyrics that work on brevity for impact rather than narrative, working in the same way as the punchy, sharp, sinuous music.
But unlike the clarity of the music, the lyrics are cryptic in that brevity, telling us something but leaving exactly what that is to our imagination. “A skin to cloth/A memory bank/A sculpted cost/A human form/A studio/I work from home/ A resting drone/A resting drone/A resting drone,” she spits out in Memory Foam. “It was men, walking down a cul de sac/They wear tailor fit suits, hold righteousness,” she bites in Stiletto, the title track of Gut Health’s debut album.
Some call it stream of consciousness, others see cryptic messaging, and plenty probably think anything at all, but know how it feels. Whatever it is, it is powerfully effective and often enough, fun. So does Athina (let’s go first name as it’s easier to render repeatedly) approach lyrics with the emphasis on tone rather than meaning?
“It’s a mixture of both,” she says. “It’s very image-based but I think there’s always an underlying meaning, but we don’t necessarily want to shout that in people’s faces. We want it left up for interpretation – at least my lyrics, but it lends itself, that concept, to the instrumentation too.
“I feel like it’s a combination of, okay, these are my influences and things that I draw from, like for example there is this band that Dom, Adam and myself really love, [late ‘70s post-punk band from Manchester] Ludus, and [singer Linder Sterling] would try all these different things out with her voice, and when we are in rehearsal or writing a song together, I am not necessarily thinking this is how I want to sing this or something like that, but I definitely bounce off the tone of what the instruments are doing.”
The ambiguity of the lyrics allow for all manner of interpretations, including whether Athina is a central figure in them. She enjoys the possibilities in that.
“I have been told that in different songs I seem like I’m playing a different character, so underlying that it’s like, what is the attitude of this song? What message am I trying to get across in the way I’m performing or singing it? That also comes from us having a variety different influences when we are writing music, because we all come from such different backgrounds. It’s not always just the one message or character that I’m trying to get across.
“I think a lot of the way that I perform or sing and the lyrics that I write is this dichotomy between performative and real states of being, whether that’s being on stage or off stage, the push and pull of different things.”
For real push and pull you can look at the way the vocals and bass sometimes work as the principal rhythm instruments, against which the rest sharpen and colour.
“Yeah. It’s funny you say that because the band started as a project with Adam and myself, in the depths of lockdown. We are partners and that was kind of our love language at the start, in our honeymoon phase and stuff,” she laughs. “Maybe that connectedness comes through and maybe we are listening to each other. It does tend to be this driving force and everyone’s kind of anchoring themselves to the bass when we are writing stuff.”
For all that rhythm, and the certainty within seconds of hearing any Gut Health song that this is dance music, it is never what you might call fuzzy or easy dance music. It can be hard and cold too. The way post-punk always worked. One way to think of it, is music to bounce off rather than sink into.
“We definitely think about energy and movement and how that is like, received, and the push and pull between softness and hardness, the dominant and submissive. The image of Stiletto I think comes into that, in what it can represent in that way. We definitely want people to feel a sense of anger or rage but also a way to find catharsis, to let loose a bit.”
One final push and pull before we go. While there is a family history behind her real surname, Wilson (her father’s done a bit, you may have come across him – Rob or Roth or is it Ross?), is there a story behind her nom-de-music of Uh oh, and its, um, interesting capitalisation?
“I just liked the way that it looked more than the other way really,” she laughs. “Maybe it sort of goes into the contrast thing that we were talking about.”
Indeed, it has some of that punchy rhythm and that jumpy, interrupted flow of the music. Nice one.
“I think I’m quite inspired by artists like Poly Styrene, all these older post-punk femme and queer icons, and I wanted to reflect that in my own stage name and stage persona.”
From Wendy O to Karen O to Athina Uh oh? Call it punk evolution.
Stiletto is out on Friday, October 11. Gut Health are touring in October.
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