The diarist lyricism and evocative electronica of Little Cub’s album Still Life, conveys a band at odds with the tribulations of the pop culture centric society they live in, while being deeply in tune with the traditions of progressive British pop.
With a strong message and a realist outlook on life, Little Cub capture a methodological truth as unique as they are, and as Adrian Acolatse explains, there’s an honesty about their approach that they’re proud of. “For us, it’s like anyone who feels a sense of disenchantment [with the world], it’s impossible not to,” Acolatse says. “Our songs tend to be about not us being so great or [our] videos or music saying the same message, but being honest about who we are as people and what we think.
“We try and bring it down to a personal level about how it affects us, of how we have acted in a good way, but to be honest about that. We’re not these morose downers, we love to throw parties and have fun with our friends and we want our music to be reflected by that.”
In Still Life, Little Cub certainly have a great vessel with which to relay their message, and while media reception for the album has been overwhelmingly positive, Acolatse says questions have varied on different elements about its concept, from the production to the socio-political meanings. “So far it’s been well received, it’s honest and so many people have been the same way – we’ve had great praise, though it’s differed from place to place.
“In the UK, they’re talking about the sonics or production stuff, recently we were in Paris and Berlin and there were lots of people talking about how our songs have a political message – generally across the board, it’s hard in this day to try comment on what’s going on but that’s only one aspect of what we do.”
The honesty of Little Cub is not exclusive to their music – indeed, Acolaste reveals that their original electro-pop sound grew from a bit of a backroom take on producing their music. “We wrote lots of songs in different ways but I feel like we have a unique sound,” Acolaste says. “We wrote most of our songs using Ableton to start with but the genesis of that was it allowed us to be really creative.
“I could write all the different parts, we could all do different things and it was kept very simple – the interest for us was the production, it was a big influence for us, especially dance music. As the songs evolved and it came to being in the studio, the transition from that to using analogue synth was a huge move for us and it was important for us to use [analogue] because it sounds so completely different. For us that was a learning curve.”
In terms of the evolution of their sound, Acolaste contests that their musical influences were never consciously touched upon. Instead, all three members of the band brought differing opinions on what they loved and created a mash-up of styles as a result of varying interest. “It’s just a fact that we’re all in to different music and are all quite opinionated and it seeps through in the songs,” says Acolaste.
A lot of people have commented on the ‘80s influence which could be why the synth sounds the way it does. “Bands like New Order, Pet Shop Boys, great electronic giants of the age. We’ve always listened to dance music and we then transitioned to wanting to be a band and not bedroom DJs, which is hard for someone who’s just using a laptop on stage – we wanted to transcend that stage. All these things ended up coming through.”
By Anna Rose
