Last year Exeter three-piece Soot Sprite released Poltergeists, an album on Specialist Subject Records. The album found “the band at their most confident” as we described in a review, with lead Elise Cook pushing through difficult conditions when creating the songs and finding strength in the process. “A mood embodied by the seam of determination and self-belief runs through the centre of the record,” we continued. “Because while the tracks emerged from a period of doubt and turmoil, Cook used the conditions as a springboard toward a greater sense of self-worth.”
Ahead of a summer tour, Soot Sprite are back with a brand new single ‘Lazy’, a track which turns its attention to generational stereotypes and the general awfulness of the contemporary situation. As though having realised the power of self-love and respect, Cook is ready to look outwards and call out the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the discourse. The single “is about the exasperation many of us are feeling about our generation being constantly blamed for not being able to thrive in the current climate,” Cook explains. “We’re constantly in the firing line for buying too many coffees or smashed avocado and that’s why we’re not able to afford our own homes or have any kind of security, instead of the increasing amount of real factors that have piled up.”
The message is delivered with cutting restraint, a tone easily mistaken for uncertainty at first, though soon solidifying into something as steely and assured as anything on Poltergeists. “I should be more motivated / This isn’t how good stories are created,” she sings in the opening, “Maybe I’m lazy / I should be more concentrated / Feel the fire burning to make it.” But of course there is the matter of context, which is always worth pointing out. As she continues “Maybe I’m lazy / Or maybe it’s:”
Three recessions in thirty years
A handheld newscycle full of fear
Maybe I’m just diluted by trauma
From living in an endless apocalyptic drama
29/07 – London, Signature Brew E8
30/07 – Exeter. Phoenix
31/07 – Newport, Le Pub
02/08 – Brighton, Hope & Ruin
03/08 – Oxford, The Library
04/08 – Sheffield, Sidney & Matilda
05/08 – Macclesfield, Mash
06/08 – Leicester, Handmade Festival