ALBUM REVIEW: The Inklings – Return Of The Puppets (self-released)
The Inklings are a post-punk trio from Teesside originally formed as a side project by two members of now-defunct punk band Zeitgeist 77.
Darren Thomas (guitar/vocals) and Mick McGee (bass/vocals) are joined by Daz’s son James on drums and keyboards, and their sound is more post-punk than Z77’s old-school punk.
This is their sixth album after 2019’s debut The Dunning Kruger Effect, This Time For Real and Bricolage (reviewed here) in 2020, Bring Out Your Dead (reviewed here) in 2021, and The Tunnel At The End Of The Light (reviewed here) in 2022.
When they started out they were heavily influenced by The Stranglers, and though the Dave Greenfield-style keyboards are still very much in evidence, they’ve developed a style that’s very much their own.
The album’s cover image of a severed hand controlling the strings is a powerful one, and much of the lyrical content is similarly dark in nature.
Take five-and-a-half-minute opening track Puppet, which seems to be about growing up in a dysfunctional household, complete with an abusive father. The fairground-style organ lends it a real dystopian feel. But there’s a happy ending as the victim fights back, and the refrain changes to “no longer a puppet…no longer a puppet”.
Four Seasons In One Day (nothing to do with the Crowded House song) is about feeling lost and struggling to cope, when nothing seems normal. The keyboard-driven Welcome To The Light, released last year as the lead single, is the most Stranglers-like track here, and appears to be about passing over to the other side.
I had no idea what Occams Razor was about – a local landmark, perhaps. But no, it’s a philosophical principle which says that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one. Who says punk rock doesn’t inform and educate as well as entertain?
With lyrics like “too many stupid answers, too little of the truth”, and “now the talking’s over, your lies have been undone, who are you really fooling, so easy to prove you wrong”, I’d guess it’s about politicians, but it could just be liars generally.
Hideaway is an acoustic-led departure from their usual sound, with Daz singing instead of his usual almost-spoken vocals, about learning from your mistakes, and “take it on the chin, so you can start again… take it in your stride, so you don’t have to hide away”.
Recent single Candlelight is perhaps the most strident song here, powered by a beefy riff, with the theme of being a puppet reappearing, and then a duo of tracks, Promised Out and Take It From Me, about self-empowerment and being your own person.
The standout track for me is Who They Gonna Make You Blame Today?, which seems to be aimed at the boomer generation who swallow the right wing/media narrative about who’s responsible for the country’s problems as they try to divide and rule.
Not far behind it is It’s In the City, a tale about being driven to extremes by living in a rundown neighbourhood with all its attendant problems. Soundwise, it reminds me a little of Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand – obviously a good thing, right?
The album ends with another pair of songs which seem to be in a similar vein, Just the Beginning and The Day Everybody Dies, the latter featuring a great bassline as Daz declares “all the world’s a stage and I wanna get off”.
Six albums in as many years is a prodigious output from The Inklings, but there’s no discernible drop-off in quality; in fact they’re getting better. 8/10.
- Return Of The Puppets is available as a limited edition digipack CD from the band via their Facebook page HERE or their Bandcamp page HERE. It’s also on all major streaming platforms.
- Look out for live dates by The Inklings, including an appearance at Stone Valley North festival in County Durham in August.
