Play Dead comprises Joe Blair (guitar, vocals), Ollie Clarke (bass, backing vocals), and Louis Englefield (drums). Based in London’s south-eastern suburbs, these guys are just 16 years old. Sure, we had silverchair as 14 year olds during the 1990s but Daniel, Chris, and Ben hadn’t had the pleasure of living through extended lockdowns and a global pandemic.
And with a back catalogue of three singles since May last year (only one of which appears on this EP), Play Dead have already started to garner support from the likes of Steve Lamacq (BBC 6Music), Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 1), and Abbie McCarthy (BBC Introducing in Kent). The production credits are just as impressive: Pat (The Vibrators) Collier at the desk, Tom Berry and Lucy Wroe at Wardour Studios, with Alex (Wronk Unit) Johnson mentoring the band through the whole process, which includes regular appearances at London’s The Windmill and Off the Cuff venues prior to the shut-down of all things fun.
Going back through their previous releases, “Whitstable” (1 May 2020) breaks ground with a sound a Sean Lock attitude to holidays, “miserable for a couple of days”. The intro is very punk with simple, clean guitar, before launching into the full production for what only went for 1’40”! Over before it began!
“Shaun” (10 July 2020) followed, with a tribute to Ollie’s nan’s boyfriend and a simple and effective chorus through 2’17”. “He’s a gentle giant with a short fuse who got arrested for punching a man off his bike in Brixton,” the band explains. “He enjoys pies, pints and Coldplay”. Could it be Sean Lock again?
“Six Hours Later” was their Christmas release (2 December 2020) and followed the same formula as Whitstable but, through its well produced body, the vocal presentation was more yelled-punk as we’ve come to expect from neo-punks of an older age both temporally and experience-wise. At 2’18” it was, as we’re getting used to by now, over before it began.
This year has been a boon for new releases, and “Skint” is no exception. Maintaining the short-sharp-loud adage of the genre, Hide opens the effort with a cacophony before launching into into a list of things Joe doesn’t want (to do) in various degrees of anger. This includes not wanting to hide! Skint follows with, perhaps, a declaration of why he didn’t want to do all that stuff in Hide.
I have a feeling Shaun is going to be their signature tune. Pinching men off their bikes; can’t be arsed to fix the lights. Viewers of 8/10 Cats might agree that this could well be Sean Lock, as I have said before. I can see the dancing-face effigy on the video now! The production here is cleaner than on the single, thanks to the team at Wardour: in true punk fashion there aren’t production credits on the single so it could well have been re-recorded. Nicely done, lads.
Brockwell Park starts hesitantly, but soon describes drinking Fosters in the dark; and some more, and some more. They’re young. They’ll learn! The Drip rounds off the effort with their version of an epic (3’18”) overture, if you like. This could well be their set-closer which could involve audience participation to get the punters wanting more and buying tickets for the next show. Or, more importantly, merch!!
At only 16, they could follow the punk tradition and call it quits after the one EP (as per Monty Python’s Dead Monkeys article in their Rock Notes sketch), given the names behind them, pushing them along, the only thing that awaits them is more music, more gigs, and more support from the industry. Lend your support to Play Dead in the upcoming summer of music at a venue near you, or download/stream some of their repertoire as soon as you can.
Links-
Bandcamp: https://weareplaydead.bandcamp.com
Mony Python’s “Rock Notes”- https://youtu.be/IVxUPnhLg-U