SKINNY LISTER
THE DEVIL, THE HEART & THE FIGHT (2016)

Roaring drunk in Hamburg. Locked in a bunker in Berlin. Tearing up the road in New York and Tokyo. Dreaming of Cairo. The wide-eyed, rump-shaking world of folk punk heroes Skinny Lister is broadening by the record. If their folk debut celebrated the sticks and their punkier second blinked in the bright lights of London, their rocked-up third, The Devil, The Heart & The Fight, sees them go global.

“The first album [Forge & Flagon] was quite rural,” says singer, guitarist and one-time chief of the stomp-box Dan Heptinstall, “we sang about the countryside and dandelions and stuff like that. The second album [Down On Deptford Broadway] was very London-based, we were talking about Deptford and Farringdon. With this album, because we’ve done so much traveling, it was broadening out a bit, it’s more on-the-road. We cobbled the songs together all across the world. Every day we’d be going in different dive rehearsal studios all over America, Germany and the UK. In Berlin we used a bunker, an old air raid shelter from the war and they’d converted into a rehearsal rooms.”

“We got locked in!” adds singer and dancer Lorna Heptinstall. “The owners were like ‘see you at six’ and then the guys wanted a fag and went upstairs to have a smoke and went ‘we can’t get out of here’.”

As folk rock’s rowdiest rabble since 2009, Skinny’s world has always been an adventure-filled place to be. They’ve held gigs in Land Rovers. They’ve sung while wing-walking. They’ve toured in a narrow boat. They’ve stomped and jigged on restaurant tables, in hotel elevators and in record label car parks. And, as their two previous albums sent them reeling into the hearts of America, the UK, Germany and Japan – on headline tours and stints with Frank Turner, Flogging Molly and the Vans Warped Tour - wherever they play their lusty shanties, punk folk roar-alongs and crazed whirls of love, fighting and booze, you’ll still find them out dancing with the crowd, passing around their flagon of rum or crowd-surfing to the bar, double-bass in hand, to neck shots mid-song. Make no bones – Skinny Lister are the wildest party band you’ll ever get drunk with. And you will get drunk with them.

“We still have the flagon,” says Dan. “We pass a flagon of rum out to the crowd and everyone partakes.”

Pieced together in basements, bunkers and rehearsal studios (including Anti-Flag’s base in Pittsburgh) while on the road in the US, Europe and Japan, and recorded over five weeks in Newcastle Under Lyme’s Silk Mill Studio in May 2016 with producer Tristan Ivemy (Frank Turner, The Holloways), The Devil, The Heart & The Fight is Skinny Lister’s most far-reaching, exciting and accomplished album yet. It’s a full-on rock record that splashes even more punk vigour and eighties pop elements across their fervent folk canvas, taking in hints of Adam Ant and Kate Bush. It also brings the folk storytelling tradition bang up to date with its tales of on-the-road mayhem, most notably the Pogue-ish Hamburg Drunk, the story of the fateful night they ended a tour in Hamburg with plenty of rider booze left and decided the most sensible course of action was to neck the lot.

“I stamped on a homeless guy’s cup of money and dragged it along the street,” Dan confesses.

“It was horrible, really dark,” Lorna laughs. “He was clinging to this bottle of whiskey going ‘it’s mine! It’s mine!’ and knocking everybody out of the way. Prostitutes were hitting on him on the Reeperbahn. Then we found this amazing bar where they actually let us in, and Dan pulled his toothbrush out of his jacket – he has a habit of cleaning his teeth before he goes onstage, weirdly – and started frothing up his beer, that was going everywhere, he was cleaning his teeth with beer and the lady just came up and said ‘we don’t want your kind here, get out now!’ Ever since then we keep going back and she remembers him and she welcomes us with open arms. ’Hamburg drunk’ has turned into a catchphrase within Skinny Lister. Even my mum would be like ‘you didn’t get Hamburg drunk last night did you Lorna?’”

From the fiery Elvis-gone-folk roar of opener Wanted – Dan saluting London, New York and Cairo in a song “about looking for life in the cities we’d visit” - The Devil, The Heart & The Fight comes out fists first. “We wanted a big sound,” says Lorna, “we wanted it to sound punchy and have more attitude than the last one.”

They wanted it to be brutally honest and close to the knuckle too. “This album has been inspired by Trouble On Oxford Street a bit more,” Lorna reveals, “there’s a few more true stories on it. Nobody’s safe. If you know us, you’re not safe.” “I’ve gone pretty close to home on a lot of the songs,” Dan adds. “One of them’s about our drummer Tom who had his wedding cancelled by his fiancée. Everything I write is true but there’s a lot of songs on there about people that are pretty close to me.”

So the jubilant "Geordie Lad" is an open letter of reconciliation to their ex-bassist Dan Grey. “He left the band and there was a bit of falling out,” Dan explains. “It’s a shame that we’re not as good friends as we were. So it’s a little nod to that as well as speaking to him indirectly through the medium of album.”

And what of Charlie, eponymous star of a pounding pop classic who “carries the dream for all of us, flying the flag for northerners, council estate to Hollywood… like Steve McQueen he took the jump”? “He’s a friend of mine from Bridlington,” says Dan. “He lived on a council estate I used to live on in East Yorkshire. He’s only twenty-one but his sister was doing bits of acting work, took him along to an audition and he got picked up by an agent who then passed him on to an agent in LA and from there he’s picked up a massive role in a film that’s coming out this year and a big Netflix series that’s about to hit the screens. So he’s by accident fallen into this life. There’s a bit of jealousy in there but good on him.”

A mature, vibrant and varies record, it mingles classic Skinny folk romances (Grace, Reunion) with epic rock takes on rafter-rattling shanties (Beat It On The Chest) and hearty Dexys-style tributes to the fans they meet on the road (Fair Winds And Following Seas), plus a hitherto unseen darker side. Take the deceptively upbeat Injuries, Dan’s ode on the bruising nature of life, or Devil In Me, in which Lorna comes on like the a particularly melodic Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: “the devil in me will come for you and you’ll pay the price for not being very nice… you took my life, I’m taking yours, that seems a fair trade”. Gulp.

“It is a bit murder-y,” Lorna says, “every girlfriend who’s got an ounce of jealousy or insecurity or feeling that she likes the guy more than the guy likes her has got that ‘don’t fucking fuck this up or I’ll cut your balls off’.” “It was something to do with The Catcher In The Rye and Mark Chapman, who shot Lennon,” adds Dan. “Those stalker type characters. I was trying to capture that dark stalking mentality. It’s nice to twist it – a love song but a bit darker, more threatening. It’s almost like Bonny Away’s darker cousin.”

And The Devil, The Heart & The Fight is like Skinny’s previous albums gone backpacking; expanding its horizons, full of adventure, discovering itself and doing things it regrets in the morning. Have heart, ye devils, join the fight.