Skint & Demoralised is a duo consisting of producer MiniDog and Matt Abbott, who started honing his musical style at 17 when he began writing and performing spoken word poetry around his UK hometown of Wakefield, Yorkshire. The early heckling he got might be where the groups name comes from, but now that they’re signed to Mercury Records he’s probably not worrying about it anymore.
We have to give credit for the music we’re about to share with you to the BBC’s music newsbeat. They have this great habit of finding really unheard of acts that are also really quite good. Skint & Demoralised are the latest they’ve turned us on to, a spoken word-ish, pop/rock duo from northern England.
In 2007, Abbott was contacted by MiniDog, a producer from Sheffield, who wanted to put Abbott’s demo tracks together. The partnership continued, and now the formula is set — Abbott provides the lyrics, MiniDog, the music. Abbott told the BBC, “We’ve kind of pulled a lot of northern soul, a little bit of Motown and a lot of the Smiths — we’ve brought it up to date with a bit of distortion.”
If you like the delivery of The Streets and the word play of The Arctic Monkeys, you’ll dig Skint & Demoralised. The duo has a new single out Feb. 16, “This Song Is Definitely Not About You”, and the album Love & Other Catastrophes will be out sometime this spring. The album was actually partially recorded in Brooklyn last summer with the now-legendary Dap Kings.
Have a listen to one of the duo’s demo tracks, “Falling in Love (On The 126)” here, and be sure to check out their MySpace to hear the new single “This Song Is Definitely Not About You” and our personal favorite, “Only Lust Ignores Violence Involving Ambulances”.
Skint & Demoralised – “Falling In Love (On The 126)”
