London-based independent powerhouse rock label Xtra Mile Recordings and rising Essex punks Pet Needs have announced the release of the band’s forthcoming studio album, ’Intermittent Fast Living’ – this is their third studio release. In as many years, ’Intermittent Fast Living’ is inspired by the relentless, breathless, stop-start lifestyle members have found themselves living in recent times.
Led by the blazing, punk-bristled offering ’Separation Anxiety,’ the album’s first single unfolds as a warped interpretation of the traditional love song. With breakneck instrumentals, runaway riffs, and offbeat declarations of undying devotion, the single captures a fun-focused and frenetic approach to music-making, but also their knack for injecting life’s deeper deliberations into the mix.
“‘Separation Anxiety’ is an unconventional, subverted love song about my wife Lorna,” frontman Johnny Marriott says. “We have been together almost 15 years and had never spent more than two weeks apart until last year. I know Lorna would absolutely cringe at anything too over-sincere, so shouting that I love her more than anyone else does is more her style!”
Being strapped-in to the big dipper that is living the rock’n’roll lifestyle most kids can only dream of, while trying to balance a steady family life at home, is not without its challenges. And by perpetually riding around what frontman describes as “a dream-like tornado,” they have found themselves jolting between a life in the fast lane and the security and stillness of being with those they love.
Channeling the chaos of their dichotomous lives into their visceral latest work, Johnny explains: “In the last 18 months, we have been catapulted from steady jobs and playing in our small town local bars to world tours at a million miles an hour. The life we’d grown accustomed to is constantly thrown behind us until it disappears into the distance in our rearview mirror. We thunder forward, show by show, adventure by adventure, until [normal life] returns as a speck on the horizon like an oasis in the desert. Then suddenly we’re home again. I sit content on the sofa with a beer, my wife and our new little puppy wondering what the hell just happened for the last three months.”
From bare-bones scratched out in the sanctity of their spare bedroom into the full-bodied and frenzied final cuts befitting of their third body of work, the songs of ’Intermittent Fast Living’ quickly began to take shape. Booking themselves in at Vada Studios with producer and sound engineer George Perks (Enter Shikari, You Me At Six, Mogwai, Skindred), Pet Needs hunkered down at the residential studio and began “the most creative fortnight of [their] lives.”
“All these songs started life on a battered acoustic guitar in my spare room,” the frontman recalls. “I then took them to my brother and collaborator George, and together we worked them up from ideas into fully-arranged, fully-fledged songs. With the band, we transform embryonic ideas into huge songs with incredible arrangements of drums, bass, guitars, and more.”
Like that unexpected snapshot for sale at the end of a theme park ride, ’Intermittent Fast Living’ is a rush of adrenaline and a tornado of emotion, a vivid portrait of a band riding high on the rollercoaster that is the rock’n’roll life, and stopping for just a split-second to capture the moment – the album will be released on February 16th next year.
Intermittent Fast Living tracklist:
01. How Are You
02. Separation Anxiety
03. Fingernails
04. The Age That You Were
05. Self Restraint
06. Lucid
07. Sleep When I’m Dead
08. The Optimist
09. Trip
10. The Burning Building
11. Buried Together