Paddy Considine Walks Clash Through Riding The Low’s New Album

Paddy Considine is one of the finest actors this country has ever seen, someone who commits himself to each role with a burning intensity.

Yet throughout his career – his life, even – music has played a key role, whether that’s to relax, as a point of inspiration, or as a lens to view the world through.

Riding The Low is his group, an outlet for audio expression that produces results every bit as gripping, and unrelenting as his acting work.

New album ‘The Death Of Gobshite Rambo’ is out now, with its bruising sonics finally finding a place in British music – it’s worth aligning alongside Northern outsider voices such as Michael Head, early Verve, or aspects of Doves’ work.

‘The Death Of Gobshite Rambo’ has a narrative thrust, with Paddy Considine’s songwriting touching on personal loss, philosophy, anxiety, and the class struggle.

With British life still excluding working class voices from the mainstream, Riding The Low’s work carries increased resonance, alongside the refined, finessed songwriting.

Tune in below, then check out a track by track guide penned by Paddy Considine.

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Carapace Of Glass

It’s about the faces we put on for other people, and asking ‘well who is the real me?’ It quotes Jean Paul Sartre’s ‘Hell is other people’ which isn’t about the hell of being around other people, but more about judging yourself based on other people’s perception of you. If you do this you aren’t living your life authentically. I woke up with this circling my head one morning and managed to capture lightning. Me and Chris had it nailed by lunchtime. It was the last song to go on the album.

Wake Me Up When It’s Over

Looks at the idea of ‘Ickean’ conspiracy theories and the possibility that what we have been told about our history is untrue. How would we cope if we learned that everything we understood to be reality is a lie. If the moon was artificial, if it came crashing down, how would we react?

It’s also about how we are losing touch with humanity and with our relationships to each other. The internet and social media have made fools of us all. We handed over our information, memories and privacy to marketing companies and big tech. I don’t like what we have become. ‘Wake me up when it’s all over’.

It also has a killer spoken word section performed by Robert Pollard.

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The Last Great Wow!

The last great wow is death. The final mission. It’s a sequel to the song ‘Road’ from our first album, about a conman that poses as a religious leader and creates a cult.

It’s pretty dark stuff as his ultimate plan is to kill all his followers in a mass suicide. It’s his way of hitting back at the world. The trumpets that open the track were taken from the chorus, and we just stuck them on the opening. It makes it more epic I think.

Live From The Tramp Fights

We have had this song for a few years now and never really captured it before in the studio. Live it’s a real fan favourite, we sort of pull it out if we need to give the crowd a kick. It’s basically about profiteering from other people’s violence and keeping your own hands clean of blood. It also my own health anxiety, how I can convince myself that I have a brain tumour or cancer and how pathetic that makes me feel. Dan’s riff is great on this.

Tommy Hawk

The ‘Heyoka’ is the sensitive in Native American tribal culture. The one who is different, the clown that does not follow the tribe. I use this chant in the song. I am a ‘Heyoka’. I heard Bull’s Coach Phil Jackson use the term in The Last Dance when he was referring to Dennis Rodman. I loved it. I just had to use it in the song.

It has a feel of Adam and the Ants in there. Adam is a big influence on me. Gavin Monaghan who produced the album encouraged the songs to be more cinematic, introducing a French horn to signal the cavalry’s arrival. There’s a lot in my words about the sins of our ancestors being thrust upon the next generation. About being marked in some way by a curse that you cannot escape no matter how much success you have.

By-Product Of The Last Flats

The early version of this was a very scratchy acoustic guitar with a caustic vocal on it. It was quite delicate. How it turned into this little monster I don’t know. It’s had a great response. It mentions places where I used to hang around as a kid. Aspiring to break out and escape the boundaries of your small town, but realising that all of your idols you believed in as a kid were fake. They were more fucked up than you are. Guitars are spiky on this. It snarls.

Crisis Common Stuck

It’s an F-you to anybody that told me I was shit. For every door closed in my face when I was a little boy. People on my estate that closed the door on me: fuck you. We were all common. You thought you were better than me. I had a label put on my back that I didn’t deserve, because I came from a ‘bad’ family. Hypocrites. Don’t even buy a ticket. Oh, and the strings are beautiful on it.

Deluded Few

The pursuit of success. What’s really behind the door? What’s behind the door of that exclusive club where people sell and lose their souls? Can you be the same person if you have witnessed the demonic behaviour of the ‘elites’? This is my favourite song. It’s got a ‘Hi-Fi’ era REM vibe. I’m good with that. I love REM.

Black Mass

Written in New York when I was doing a Broadway play. I saw a black mass of energy rise from the crowd during a curtain call. It hovered above them.

I had lots of supernatural experience doing theatre. I was pushed on stage one night by an unseen force. I was getting fearful and something shoved me in the back. It wasn’t aggressive. It was more like ‘get your arse out there and do it’. I was missing my family. It manifested in this song.

Spinning Like Us All

This was going to be a single. It’s being slightly overlooked at the moment but I know it will rise to the top. I saw a woman with a disfigured face perform a fire dance at Coney Island. She was twirling it like a majorette. It became mesmerising. You didn’t see the disfigurement anymore. She became like a moving painting. There was a beauty to it. I wanted to write about her.

I imagined all these lonely, paranoid characters in New York all spinning out of control mentally. I also write about my son. He’s the punk in the song. I live such a guarded life sometimes. I just wanted to say that I love everybody.

The Death Of Gobshite Rambo

The death of my father. Trying to make sense of what happened and what he left behind.

Death is never what you think it is. There is no map on how to deal with it. My father was a mighty man. I loved him, but he was a mental and physical bully at times. To see this man, a force of nature waste away from cancer… It was tough. It triggered a depression in me.

I love my brother and sisters, but we are mostly estranged. I wanted them to know that I saw them that day. I love them, but I’m not sure if we can ever heal together. In that sense it’s more about my siblings than my father. I sometimes wonder if I am cheap writing about these things, but it’s the only way I can manage this experience.

Truth Is All I Have

It’s all any of us have. Yet it’s so fucking hard to be truthful. I basically cannot live up to other peoples expectations of me. A lot of my depression came from people telling me they thought I’d do greater things as an actor. I’d be working with Scorsese etc.

Guess what?

I’m doing my damn best just to live every fucking day. Keep your expectations to yourself. I’m just grateful I have a relationship with creativity. It’s a life force. I love the guitar solo in this. We lifted it and stuck it in the outro. It’s very epic.

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 ‘The Death Of Gobshite Rambo’ is out now.

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