Ashby-de-la-Zouch’s Young Knives and I go way back. As I noted when I wrote about being let go from BrooklynVegan, along with fellow editors Andrew Sacher and Amanda Hatfield, by parent company VEEPS last week, when BV founder Dave first emailed me about writing for his blog, he said I filled a void because “I knew about the secret Versus reunion at Union Hall and have seen the Young Knives more than once.” So it’s funny timing that, less than a week later, Young Knives were back with a new single. How could I not devote a post to it?
“Everything’s a PsyOp” is the kind of post-punk-funk-meets-proggy-British-folk that sibling bandleaders Henry and Thomas “House of Lords” Dartnall have been doing so well for 20 years. Does it sound a little like Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away”? Perhaps, but in the most Leicestershire kind of way, and with the soaring middle eighth and Henry’s distinctive lyrical bent and delivery.
It’s also about as 2026 as it gets. “I wrote the song when I read the Wired piece about Geese being a PsyOp,” Henry tells me. “I thought it was funny to pick on them. When you really interrogate the things you love or indeed hate, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that you came to those decisions independently, everything that forms our value systems is really built on some kind of conditioning. I guess we all know this in theory, like it’s fairly accepted these days that nothing is just inherently good or bad, but it’s not how we talk. We still use the language of independent, autonomous human beings who have objectively evaluated something and made a rational decision about its worth. So there’s a weird disconnect between what we know intellectually and how we talk about it day to day, we often say that a band are awful, or a piece of music, or indeed anything, you know, a brand of toothpaste or whatever, is just so good. Like we were tapping into something really inherent in the thing itself, which is just a lie really.”
“That’s why I thought the word PsyOp kind of encapsulated a broader picture,” Henry says. “I like the idea that a silly rock song can have a deep vein of questioning like that in it, it’s really the only reason I keep writing, to ask questions like that. I suppose I am aiming at some ideal of true art really questioning the human condition without taking the question too seriously, just chucking it around and seeing what happens, like no one will even notice, and that’s OK too, because at least I know I’ve done it.”
You can read more from Henry on the song below.
“Everything’s a PsyOp” is out as a 7” single with another new song, the proggy, synthy “This Bright Condition,” on the flip. There’s a video for the A-side that will be out tomorrow:
This post is seeming even less like a coincidence: this Friday is also the 20th anniversary of Young Knives’ excellent Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Voices of Animals and Men. Produced by Gang of Four’s Andy Gill, the album includes such mid-’00s indie bangers as “She’s Attracted To,” “Weekends and Bleak Days (Hot Summer),” and “Here Comes the Rumor Mill” and holds up better than a lot of the other bands doing similar things at the time. They’ll be celebrating on a UK tour this fall, too.
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Henry Dartnall on “Everything’s a PsyOp”":
I wrote the song when I read the Wired piece about Geese being a PsyOp. I thought it was funny to pick on them. When you really interrogate the things you love or indeed hate, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that you came to those decisions independently, everything that forms our value systems is really built on some kind of conditioning. I guess we all know this in theory, like it’s fairly accepted these days that nothing is just inherently good or bad, but it’s not how we talk. We still use the language of independent, autonomous human beings who have objectively evaluated something and made a rational decision about its worth. So there’s a weird disconnect between what we know intellectually and how we talk about it day to day, we often say that a band are awful, or a piece of music, or indeed anything, you know, a brand of toothpaste or whatever, is just so good. Like we were tapping into something really inherent in the thing itself, which is just a lie really.
That’s why I thought the word PsyOp kind of encapsulated a broader picture. All the things on your preference list are valueless in and of themselves, and the more you experience them as such, the less you will cling to them, and the freer you might become. Maybe that’s too much of an explanation, but I like the idea that a silly rock song can have a deep vein of questioning like that in it, it’s really the only reason I keep writing, to ask questions like that. I suppose I am aiming at some ideal of true art really questioning the human condition without taking the question too seriously, just chucking it around and seeing what happens, like no one will even notice, and that’s OK too, because at least I know I’ve done it.
It was also amazing to me just how many words you can find that mean “misleading” or “not true”, we have loads of them in English, like we need that many to describe the myriad ways we lie to ourselves. I was thinking about this yesterday. The Buddha used the word Dukkha, which sort of means “unsatisfactoriness,” which people often translate as suffering, but that’s kind of too negative in a way. It’s a slightly different point: everything in the world that we pursue or try to avoid leaves us somehow unsatisfied. But I think it plays into the same feeling that there is a shallowness to most of the things we ascribe depth to. Nothing is inherently wrong with choosing one thing over another, I’m not suddenly supposed to start enjoying the taste of stinky tofu, but we are in need of some new way of looking at things that reveals a subtler picture of how we come to conclusions, and how movable and transient our choices/preferences are.
I think the Lego Movie song “Everything Is Awesome” was making a similar point, “we’re gonna party 4 eva” reveals the ridiculousness of a life that is wall-to-wall incredible and full of pretty much just the good stuff.
Also, the song was a realization of a dream with the band, which was to just write a song and bash it out. We even had a conversation in the rehearsal studio where I was saying that I was going to schedule this song for release before we had even written it. House was like, “shouldn’t we wait until we know it’s actually good before we do that?” And I just wanted to fuck that whole thing off, what’s good? This is going to be vibey and spontaneous, let’s just go for it. We weren’t fighting, by the way, he just voiced the way that normal people think about these things. For me, the only point in continuing is: 1. Like I already said, ask questions about accepted ways of thinking/living etc, and 2. Have a blast doing it. It could be a new manifesto.