We’re thrilled to be able to share the record, which is also the debut release of Bournemouth-based cassette label Devil Town Tapes, a few days before it comes out later this week. Opener ‘Bored To Death’ introduces Lee’s distinctive vocal delivery, drawing from the disaffected drawl of Will Toledo to produce a sound that’s at once emotive and ironic. There’s a confrontational tone too, a generalised anger that’s long since been unhooked from any one cause and left to wash of the ways of life itself.

This world is chemicals 
and violence, 
I don’t want to sound like 
apathetic, but it all feels so indifferent 

I wasn’t born in the 80’s 
I wish I wasn’t born at all 
There’s man crying in the bathroom, 
I say, 
Shut the fuck up! 

‘Fantasies’ follows a similar vibe, personal worries combining with those of the wider world, or else hiding behind them so as to excuse their existence. The falseness of the situation lends an air of isolation, loneliness cutting through the charade. With a significant difference in sound, leaning more toward the tenderness of Hovvdy, the title track plays like an acknowledgement of this, the hip detachment dropped in favour of an earnest attempt at communication. And closer ‘Your Thing’ continues the change, a climbing down from the position of apathy, an opening up to something more risky and meaningful.

Because, for all of its bummed out detachment and disillusioned swagger, Mona is a sincere record. The irony is born of self-consciousness rather than silliness—it’s not that Cult Film don’t believe in what they want to say, rather realise how they will sound in saying it. This is cynicism as self-preservation, an attempt to survive the vulnerability and futility of feeling in a world such as our own. But, slowly across the EP, Cult Film appear to suggest that things do not have to be this way. That perhaps futility can be confronted through the act of being vulnerable, of letting things in.

Photo by Bella Alexandrova

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The EP opens as it means to go on with ‘Kings’ a warm and dreamy pop song that’s as calm and languid as it is sweetly melodious, although the lyrics reveal something a little more introverted and self-conscious.

“Everywhere I go
on a busy street
walking very slow
keep looking at my feet”

‘Holy Solitude’ is like a lo-fi bedroom version of jangle pop, while ‘Stay Close to Me’ sees McLellan’s vocals float amongst intricate guitar work. Final track ‘In Ribbons’ brings back the breezy pop sensibility in a gauze of psych rock. The song has a warm and fuzzy sense of empowerment, almost reminiscent of The War on Drugs. The perfect track to burn to CD and blast on your car’s stereo before summer says so-long for another year.

You can get Psychic EP from Liverpool’s Hail Hail Records or the Psychic Shakes Bandcamp page.

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