Grubby Mitts - Love in the Misanthropocene - 1LP

The Grubby Mitts are a nine-piece band from Bedford U.K., fronted by acclaimed visual artist Andy Holden with songs written in collaboration with composer and multi-instrumentalist Roger Illingworth.

After seven years of writing and composition, Grubby Mitts return this year with two new records. The first, the mournful and dolorous Valediction EP, (Vibe/Anti Vibe 033, April 2025) was recorded in the wake of the sudden and tragic passing of Holden’s partner in 2022. Love in the Misanthropocene strikes a different tone, attempting instead to look out to the world beyond for answers. The album shifts curiously between genres, mixing optimism and pessimism in an often perilous state of equilibrium. With Freddy Lomas (Kinn/Kanye West/Mark Leckey) brought in to add a mixture of cinematic and disruptive production, the LP is both their bleakest yet most pop-orientated record so far. Elements of the compositional techniques recognisable from the first album remain: repetition of aphoristic lines are set against multiple rhythms and shifting emotional registers, oscillating between resignation and triumphant declaration contributed by the band’s permanent horn section. The Grubby Mitts have coined the portmanteau, ‘misanthropocene’, a combination of ‘Anthropocene’ and ‘misanthrope’, to define the current moment: an age of discontent as the world moves into an environmental crisis. The songs utilise the formula of often joyful, melodic pop whilst simultaneously drawing on the history of avant-guard techniques, creating poignant songs which tread a fine line between sentiment and experimentation.

Post Truth Click Bait Blues was devised through the band's practice of collecting website headlines that appear as self-contained short stories, with each one pointing towards the absurdity of contemporary life. The tuned percussion on Ever Not Quite is arranged around transcriptions of bird song, evoking a sunrise and dawn chorus after a night of hedonistic revelry. The title track, Love in the Misanthropocene, builds with a baroque string arrangement as the band evoke the common internet response of, ‘...If it isn’t the consequence of my own actions come to visit me...” Some songs attempt objective distance, such as the philosophical collage of the disco track Leaky Bodies. Other songs return to an introverted first person narrative such as The Dogs, sung by Illingworth with tender resignation as he laments calling off the pursuit of love. There are hints of Flaming Lips, Pulp, The Books, Velvet Underground, Animal Collective, Dexys and Hot Chip but the sound is hard to pin down: at times post-punk, at other times cinematic in scope, underpinned by a mixture of live drums, drum machines, loops, vocoders and eccentricism. The album as a whole moves between sincere love songs, and a melancholic, fraught wrestle with the political climate. Love in the Misanthropocene, is full of the unlikely, disjunctive, yet satisfyingly coherent ideas typical of the Grubby Mitts. It is a definitive statement of a band whose consistent philosophy is now made fully legible, speaking directly to the present moment and life in the ‘misanthropocene’.

The band released their debut album, What The World Needs Now Is in 2015. The singles ‘To a Friend’s House the Way is Never Long’, ‘Standard’ and ‘Music of Exhaustion’ were all played on BBC 6 Music. The album picked up radio play across Europe after, ‘To a Friend’s House...’ was included on the cover-mount CD of the Wire magazine, and the band were subsequently invited to play Donau Festival in Austria. They toured the UK playing arts venues and artist run spaces culminating in several appearances at Latitude festival. In the gap between albums, Holden turned his attention to animated films which featured in widely seen exhibitions. Holden’s Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (2016) proposed the world was now best understood as a cartoon and was featured in museums all over the world. Natural Selection (2017), explored birds nests and eggs and toured to nine museums around the UK. Holden then curated the exhibition Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules (2021) at Somerset House in London.

The band have returned to playing live, performing shows with Jarvis Cocker, Alexis Taylor, Jane Weaver, a sold out headline show at London’s New River and a forthcoming headline at London’s ICA on Saturday 27th September.

1. Horse U

2. Love in the Misanthropocene

3. Leaky Bodies

4. Post Truth Click Bait Blues

5. Ever Not Quite

6. I am a Swift

7. The Dogs

8. What was the It_

Manufacturer:

Vibe/Anti-Vibe, 5 Old Fort Road, Felixstowe, Ipswich IP11 2GG vibeantivibe@gmail.com

EU Representative:

UAB Mushroom Agency, Saulėtekio al. 15-1, LT-10224, Vilnius, Lithuania