Interview
Interview
Kid Kapichi: “If we sound like a broken record, it’s because the record is broken”
Liam Gallagher's favourite new band are here to conquer the divide
Jack Wilson is sometimes asked if Kid Kapichi is trying to start a revolution. The idea of tipping the country upside down and destroying in order to rebuild might sound enticing to some, but could four men from Hastings with noise to make and venom to spit accomplish that on their own? Probably not, even if they were in the company of a far bigger, mightier musical movement. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have any power. It doesn’t mean music – theirs or anyone’s – can’t change the world.
“All we want is for likeminded people to find each other through our music,” the vocalist says, already finding Liam Gallagher and Suggs – who collaborated on latest single ‘Zombie Nation’. “That’s more than enough. We’re not blind to [the realities], we don’t think our album’s going to cause a revolution. But if it creates meaningful connections and relationships between people who feel the same way, then that is a form of revolution, I guess.”
It’s that sense of community that can be built within a live music space which Wilson feels is missing throughout the increasingly divided country as a whole. Looking at the title of their new album, There Goes The Neighbourhood, it’s easy to think that’s what they’re referring to. In reality, it has a multitude of meanings.
“I long for community,” he considers. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that that’s what makes me happy. It’s definitely part of that title choice, but another part of it is that ‘there goes the neighbourhood’ is something that would be said when ‘undesirables’ move in, and I think our government tries very hard to make our country feel like that’s an issue. But I think, at the end of the day, the undesirables are the people in power, the people with money, [so it’s about] flipping the idea of ‘there goes the neighbourhood’ on its head. In that sense, we’ve lost our country to these millionaires and billionaires that don’t understand us and have led us into these troubled waters.”
Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot Kid Kapichi take umbrage with when it comes to the current government, and that’s been a constant of their music so far. Thematically, as well as sonically, not much has changed, because within the world at large, not much has changed either – in fact, Wilson posits, it’s gotten worse. It’s reflected in the progression of their songwriting – while their 2021 debut, This Time Next Year, offered a more hopeful look at a post-Covid world, its 2022 follow-up, Here’s What You Could Have Won, contemplated those missed opportunities to implement real change as the world fell back into normality. Now, on album three, they’re looking at scenes of devastation. “I was saying to someone the other day – if we sound like a broken record, it’s because the record is broken.”
Naturally, their anger is ever-present, but they’re never downbeat. Early single ‘Let’s Get To Work’ is a rallying cry to make change off your own back rather than relying on the government to implement it, while ‘999’ is a gravelly, scathing attack against institutional police corruption – “It’s not one bad apple, it’s the whole goddamn tree,” Wilson sings in its chorus – written in the aftermath of the Sarah Everard case in March 2021. On the flipside, the album also boasts “the happiest song about Brexit you’ll ever hear” in the form of the equally quick-witted and fast-paced ‘Can EU Hear Me?’ – “The best way to describe the sentiment of that song is if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry,” he quips.
The other side of the coin, however, are catchy punk bangers crammed full of tongue-in-cheek lines and an everyman sense of fun. ‘Get Down’ captures the highs and lows of a British lads’ night out in a small town, for example, while ‘Subaru’ is a tale of being deterred from pursuing a girl because her brother drives the titular car and her dad’s “a master in kung fu”. Then there’s ‘Tamagotchi’, a humorous ode to coming of age in the comparatively simpler time of the 2000s that was inspired by him turning 30.
“Nostalgia is one of those feelings that I really love,” Wilson says. “It’s just a weird feeling because it’s kind of like déjà vu. You can’t really hold onto it. It’s so transient. Writing that song was trying to bottle that emotion, but it’s also a trip down memory lane for anyone who’s in their late 20s or early 30s.”
Despite the perceived bleakness of the current political climate, Kid Kapichi are still straining to see the glints of joy in life. When he’s asked where he finds hope, Wilson immediately goes to the simple things. “Community makes me hopeful – my friends, my family. Ultimately, at the end of the day, life is amazing and we’re all lucky to be alive. You know, what are the chances that we should even exist? I’m someone that loves the little things – that’s what keeps me going.”
While he’s hardly filled with positivity about the state of everything, he’s not pessimistic enough to think things will continue to nosedive either. They might for a while, but it won’t be that way forever. “I think we’re just in the middle of something that’s just gone on too long. There are cycles, and I’m aware that we’re just in the sh*t bit of the cycle at the moment. There is enough love and community [out there] and people want change. I think it’s coming – it’s coming from the ground up rather than from the top down, which is an amazing thing, but it takes a long time. It’s just not happened in my 20s, but maybe it will in my 30s.”
Kid Kapichi start their UK tour on March 28. Find tickets here.
