ILL “We Are ILL” (Box Records)

This is quite a long review so if you’re eyes are tired from googling and booking your face here’s a one word version: brILLiant.

ILL is a very smart name for a band. It sets an agenda: turning the stigma of mental ILLness into a badge of humour and defiance. “You’re putting stress on the NHS,” is the accusation spat back in the very first line of the opening signature tune “ILL Song.” This is the kind of unsympathetic guilt trip a lot of ILL folk are stigmatised with before they kILL themselves.  The guitars scream in protest at doctor’s orders delivered in crazed chants of “Sort yourself out!” and “Take your pILL!”  Punk-disco rhythms get the party started.  The lunatics have taken over the asylum and are making the doctors dance. The rhythm slows to a zombie crawl and dies as the ILL get pILLs forced down them to keep them calm.

ILL are quite frequently described as four women. If you watch singing keyboarder Harri Shanahan’s hilarious sci-fi B-movie spoof video for the second song “Space Dick” you could be forgiven for thinking ILL drummer Fiona Ledgard is a kick boxing interstellar crime fighter and guitarist Sadie Noble was a hologram and bassist Whitney Bluzma and Harri are a pair of blue haired aliens. However they were only acting and no giant cosmic turtles were actually harmed. “Space Dick” is the sILLiest song on the album, concerning sexual harassment and sex(ism) in space. Manic space invader lazer keyboards keep shooting down sarcastic observations about the casual sexism of sci-fi and scientists: “I work for NASA, they sexually harass ya! Fancy some fellation on the MIA station?” The line “Girl you look so foxy when you’re running out of oxygen” is about Sandra Bulloch in the film “Gravity.” I’d imagine kids would like “Space Dick” as it has more rude imagery that their parents don’t want them to listen to than the other songs, and there’s lots of cowbell and lazer guns.

On the cover there are five heads even though there are only four people in ILL. That’s because guitarist Sadie Noble who plays on this album left about a year before the album was released and was quickly replaced by Tamsin Middleton, who also plays in Liines, Mr Heart, JD Meatyard and solo as Tamsin A. The music on this album was recorded in 2015 and 2016 so Sadie played all the guitar parts, and Tamsin was only in time to sing some backing vocals. Sadie still plays in Ten Mouth Electron and Salford Media City and the last I heard was also making solo albums. It’s been such a long wait for an ILL album that the person who sang the first line of the first song on the album is no longer ILL… or maybe they just couldn’t afford the power to keep her hologram running? Whitney is also quite busy with other bands outside of ILL, playing in Diagonal Science and Trancendental Equation.

 “Stuck on a Loop” starts up with a driving bass line quickly joined by circus clown fairground synth and squidgy mangled guitar and typically foot tapping drumming. It would make a great soundtrack to a ride on the Circle line on the Undone Underground.  On the surface it seems to be about obsession, when someone can’t stop thinking about the same thing. It could be about reincarnation. It could even be about the process of songwriting.  It’s actually about the nitrogen cycle. After a manic ride round and around it’s another deranged dance floor filler that decelerates into oblivion.

“Bears” is slower than the first three songs and Whitney sings the lead vocal. Guitars are spidery and scratchy and remind me of eighties Wire at times. Threatening to feed someone to “Bears” is as close as ILL get to writing a ballad. The drILL synth on the chorus creates an evILL atmosphere. The Bears don’t care. According to Whitney “Bears” is about “regaining your inner power when it’s been taken away by dickheads.”

“Bus Shelter” is the poppiest song with a funky bass line and calypso keyboards. Sadie sings what sounds like a political protest about a homeless woman who lives in a bus shelter and gets ignored by all the busy travellers. It’s dedicated to a lady who used to give out leaflets and warn people about freemasons on Oxford Road in Manchester. There’s an obvious homage to The Fall in the chorus chant, “Hit the North.” Whitney recites mostly Manchester place names, making “Urmston” sound especially diabolical. Finally everything falls apart in panic to shouts of “The world is coming to an end” after an apocalyptic synth attack on the shelter. The world doesn’t end; it just gets more violent…

Side Two (if you have a blue vinyl copy) turns darker and to me seemed almost all lyrically about the abuse of women by men. “I am the Meat” is the heaviest song on the album. It could be about the commodification of women’s bodies in the porn industry, however it isn’t. Whitney told me it was written as an angry response to a journalist who described ILL as a “quirky choice of a support act, whilst the meat is the main, male, band.” So it’s actually about being overlooked. The drums and bass bludgeon like butchers’ hammers, keyboards make noise like blood and guts oozing out and guitar sounds like final brain death spasms. Everyone screams! ILL wILL not be a quirky side dish; they are the main course.

The longest song on the album “Slithering Lizards” is an ominous warning of impending doom: “Hey sisters, they’re coming for you! You’d better lock your door, you’d better stay inside.” As worries build, the rhythm speeds up and the guitar splutters in wildly freaked out spasms. Teeth rot in a granny flat where life is not pretty. This song could work well in a horror film soundtrack. Appropriately it’s about the vile Tory government. 

“Power” is the most emotional song on the album. Harri sounds threatening and vulnerable, desperate and confused. It’s a slow night time crawl, a brain trying to break out of a skull. “All this violence is so perfect.”

“What am I supposed to do with all this power?” sings Harri like her head is going to explode. Maybe write a song? According to Whitney, ““Power” is about a woman embracing her sexuality and being passionate, which scares some people because it disturbs the societal norms of how women should be seen.”

“Hysteria” picks up the pace and ends the album with a floor filling hyper blast for mother liberation. “You have a purpose, a god given purpose… you’re just a birthing machine endorsed by the state / church.” It’s probably my favourite ILL song and this version is angrier, wilder and more hysterical than the previous version they recorded for a three song EP, but not as funny, as the “Push push” refrain isn’t pushed so much and there’s no fake birth dance. It reminds me of “Arabian Knights” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, but Whitney told me she’d never heard that song. The “mother hero” chant is from the mother hero medal awarded to mothers in the USSR. Don’t waste your life looking pretty, getting married and having kids to please the church and state. Go get ILL at the punk disco instead.

Three other songs were recorded by John Tatlock on Box Mobile studio during the album sessions but not included. They were rerecordings of “Kremlin” and “Secret Wife” from earlier EPs and another as yet unreleased song called “Androids Against Asimov” described by Whitney as a ten minute epic with scary time signatures that they haven’t played live. If I have any criticism to make of the album it’s that “Kremlin” would have made a great opening song for side 2, and it’s a shame they didn’t include it. You’ll just have to listen on the internet or find the EP. After you buy the album you cheeky downloader!

You can hear "ILL Song" on the ILL bandcamp:

https://weareill.bandcamp.com/

You can hear "Stuck on a Loop" and "Hysteria" and read the album press release on the Box Records website:

http://box-records.com/album/we-are-ill

Watch the video of "Space Dick" here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRRQcGM6f6A

Watch the video of "ILL Song" here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmml7MBikXk

Find ILL gigs:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/weareill/events/