The video for Nothing Constructive’ kicks off with the prerequisite sass deserving of a record that sounds like it has already checked out, the band’s singer walking into a room with his band already playing, as if he is running late for practice. Before he has really found his spot, he has launched into his vocal - this time as if he can’t wait to get it done.
Kitten Heel are a six-piece outfit hailing from the NSW city Wollongong in Australia, led by writer/producer pair Jareth Leslie-Evans and Jourdain Vitiello. The sound of Factory Records and Modular channels through their music, but you can also hear more than a dash of DFA and LCD Soundsystem in the nervous energy on display here.
The tense anxiety Nothing Constructive seethes with is rooted in an everyday reality we all have to deal with, as the described by Kitten Heel:
“Nothing Constructive is essentially about my detachment from Social Media. The sheer volume of false and ill-informed opinion, all championing a self-righteous chest beating — is baffling. For a long time, it snared my ability to do anything else. I’d become angry, it crippled my creativity — which in turn scared me beyond comprehension. So, I deleted all platforms and let blissful ignorance sooth me once more. The clip plays with the dominant and submissive nature of that relationship.”
You can see that dominant and submissive relationship is invoked in the bindings that ensnare the band as they play, gradually crippling their free will.
The attitude stoked vocal gives Nothing Constructive a feeling of lethargic ambivalence, but those brooding synths make it feel like it could tip over into anarchy with a moment’s notice. Nothing Constructive never quite goes there, but I would love an extended version of this — I can imagine the chaotic cacophony of instruments increasingly disjointed from the locked groove like melody they start with. An artistic protest evoking the din we so readily expose ourselves to on social media.