Current Affairs are a post punk band from Glasgow, neatly navigating the line between new wave and goth. Formed in 2016 and Comprising Joan (ex-The Royal We/Seconds/Rose McDowall's band), Seb (ex-Anxiety/Pissy), Josh (The Downs/Kaspar Hauser/ex-Rose McDowall's band) and Andrew (Shopping/As Ondas). A cassette called Object was released along the way on Comodillo Tapes and in December 2018 the band’s first 7” Breeding Feeling -bw- Draw The Line was put out into the world by Not Unloved, followed in June 2019 by Buckle Up -bw- World’s In Crisis, out via Berlin’s Dot Dot Dot (...). Object & Subject is the accumulation of the band’s output over 3 years (excluding the Dot Dot Dot release), now gathered and synthesised into one convenient disc. “We never agonised over our sound or direction, but worked to our punk strengths and leaned into our pop tendencies collectively. On the cusp of releasing an album and re-imagining our live set up, it feels great to be putting out this overview of what we’ve made so far. Our take: Object & Subject collects two earlier releases—a demo tape and a single—from this Scottish post-punk band featuring members of Anxiety, Shopping, and others. If you’re a die-hard Siouxsie & the Banshees fan (as I am), that will be the first comparison that leaps to mind as the singer sounds a lot like Siouxsie and the music—while hardly a Banshees rip-off—uses tropes like tom-heavy drumming and chorus on the guitar. Also like the Banshees, there’s a good balance here between pop elements and more brooding, atmospheric passages. To my ears, “Breeding Feeling” is the hit with its big chorus, but the spare “Cheap Cuts” and the more angular, punky “Eyes” are also great. My only complaint is that two of the songs appear here twice in versions that aren’t too different from one another, but it’s a complaint more in theory than in practice, as I’ve played the whole thing a bunch of times without skipping a track. If you’re a fan of recent records by Pleasure Leftists or Public Service, odds are you’ll get a lot of mileage out of Current Affairs.
