On ‘Base and Superstructure’ they proffer two fingers to the Old Boys’ club and their love songs too.

South London hates romantic love songs about romantic love. It’s true. The modern scene got the ick from conscientious, faithful, beautiful love songs. Love songs are now reserved for algorithmically popular singer songwriters who sing other people’s songs, singers with a TikTok following and a thoughtful auntie in the media. An auntie who can float a new EP over a desk of someone important across the road at Sony. An auntie known to frequent “Fortnum’s” with washed out stars from the eighties who wear blazers paired with denim jeans and gloat about their outdated high flying address books. The capital’s ruling dissidents, Meatraffle, proffer two fingers to the old boys club with a glowing manifesto of anti-pop pop songs bound with the title ‘Base and Superstructure.’

‘Base and Superstructure’, Meatraffle’s third studio album, dismantles big music’s repetitive, over lubricated cogs, with tongue in cheek, lighthearted stabs and sarky, satirical songs. Single ‘Lovesong Industrial Complex,’ with it’s sexy George Michael bass line, turns it’s nose up at, puts it’s foot down upon, the overtly formulaic nature of love songs saturating new music’s output. The self-indulgence! To write about your wonderful love with another human! Cynical, albeit self-critical, rantings confused about the appeal of romance in music warm your heart with a dark comedic undertone.

“People pay for love songs or download them illegally. Kids as young as 3 sing about them, incredibly. There is nothing wrong with a song about love. But they are rarely ever platonic. Lots of full bloodied lust and crying in your gin and tonic.”

I used to know a very depressed man who hated when it was sunny because he felt obliged to enjoy the weather outside; singer Zsa Zsa Sapien’s opinion on love songs reminds me very much of this poor bastard. Hilariously unable to enjoy the sweet and lovely things in life in fear of it being too sweet and too lovely or not sweet or lovely at all. Beneath these bars, an ironic-sounding wedding disco, Nile Rogers eat your heart out, Motown-ready, backing track deepens sardonicism to this diss track to love.

The second track on the album ‘Posh People in Pop’ gets more candid in its calling out of the nepotistic, trust funded products of the music industry. It speaks of figures ridiculing the upper class in spite of being, “Born in the ghettos of Richmond Park.” Specific lines in this track are especially evocative of Matty Healy, The 1975’s ID-checking, teenage girl snogging, upmarket junky who grew up in Wilmslow, Cheshire’s football mansion suburb. Meatraffle attack the unfathomably loose grasp on reality such artists possess, turning the light on to uncover the out of touch darkness that is drawn over certain artist socio-political backgrounds with curtains of swanky marketing campaigns and contrived activism. Resilient, rubbery, almost nursery rhyme beats behind the lyrics in this track provide ridicule to giggle away at.

Sapien’s horns across the album are used like a synthesiser, muddying the differentiation of the electronics set beneath it. It’s Skatronics donning a pork pie hat and a skinny tie matched with techno speed shades. It’s The Fox and Firkin rockabilly pres to an all nighter at FOLD.

A Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s self-confidence to the music makes you believe it makes sense and that Sapien isn’t just a town crier with a trumpet and an Engels audiobook. If these lyrics and horns were slapped on a fast and ready punk instrumental. we might not be so sure. But to slam the fallacy of trickle-down economics amid this twisted but merry sound comes across far more sincerely. The frivolity of the silly billy, make ya wan dance riddims that define Meatraffle’s music bestows a certain mandate to speak truths both on-the-nose and out of this world.

The jovial sentiment of the sound matches oh so naturally with the more mundane musings on the record. A certain Television Personalities approach to everyday highs and lows of life; singing about finding money on the floor – that turns out to be fake! – or singing in the shower, works as a tonic to the more pressing ambushes. These tracks align agreeably with Blang Records label comrade and south London hero, Pink Eye Club, who similarly calls out the contradictions and annoyances at the heart of life in the city.

‘Base and Superstructure’ is introspectively rounded off with Meatraffle understanding that the underdog remains the underdog but that the underdogs must stick together and band against the malevolent evils they face. ‘Smallest Gang’ is a love song to the underground, knowing there’s little they can do but make fun of these problems. Backing vocals of “ooo oooh oooh” sound like something off a cheesy Peter Andre song. If you squint your ears this is all very romantic.