The unlikely chorus of Jason Williamson and Sue Tompkins

It’s as cheery an offering as you’d expect from the Nottingham post-punks who disagree as much with their genre title as they do with many things.

Across the album’s thirteen tracks they feature a series of collaborators from the likes of Game of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie and fellow Midlands punks Big Special on the searing opener “The Good Life,” to the complimentary vocals of Liam Bailey on the MAGA-takedown “Flood The Zone.” Alduous Harding offers a moment of lightness on the hooky “Elitist G.O.A.T,” while on recent single “No Touch,” Williamson’s punctuating delivery punches up against the lilting tones of Sue Tompkins.

Singer in the short-lived but now cult Glaswegian indie-rock band Life Without Buildings, Tompkins has been out of the music industry since her group disbanded shortly after the release of their seminal debut album Any Other City in 2002. Switching disciplines, she continued to work as a visual and sound artist. After recently providing Self Esteem with a short outro on “Logic, Bitch!” from her recent album A Complicated Woman, this marks her first real return to music.

Introduced to Tompkins' music by Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee at Rough Trade, Williamson reached out. The resulting track is a driving force of staccato lyricism and playful melody that centres on both musician’s ability to get their words stuck in your head. The accompanying video was directed by English filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Bird, American Honey) and shot in her home county of Kent against a backdrop of Reform-induced faux patriotism.

Both Tompkins and Williamson agreed to come together on a video call to discuss the collaboration, the video, and the creative journey that brought them to the final version of “No Touch.” Despite knowing each other for a short period of time, they shared a warm connection and required very little prompts, instead articulately and quite introspectively discussing their work, creative approach, and all that both encompass.

BEST FIT: I love the track. I love the video. I love the collaboration. I guess overall we are talking about The Demise of Planet X, specifically your collaboration and how you came to be on “No Touch,” Sue. I read in the press release that you two didn't know each other before this and it was Rough Trade that set you up? So maybe that's a good place to start.

JASON WILLIAMSON: As soon as Jeanette played some of your music, with your old band, Life Without Buildings…

SUE TOMPKINS: Yeah. Very old band. Terrible name. I've got issues with it. Always have.

JASON: Was it a collaborative name?

SUE: It just makes me laugh, Jason, because the guys in the band, they were already a band. It was just a funny thing because when they said, "The name of the band is Life Without Buildings," I just remember thinking, oh, it's a bit of a mouthful. It doesn't really flow. But now I know the links - like Robert in the band was really into Japan and lots of links to David Sylvian and all these sort of other things that I honestly didn't know. I just remember thinking, Life Without Buildings?

JASON: I don't know if you sit well with the indie tag, but it is a classic name for a band of that ilk, y’know? But it's interesting that they were quite influenced by Japan. I think I might have to listen to some Japan. What were you influenced by at the time?

SUE: Nothing that they were into, if you see what I mean. We were friends and Glasgow, I still live in Glasgow, and I was going to say it’s sort of quite an incestuous place in a way. Sometimes that can be really good.

JASON: And other times quite stifling.

SUE: Everyone's been out with everybody else and everything. That sounds weird. It sounds a bit cultish…

JASON: No, not really. But it is like that with small scenes or small cities.

SUE: Because that's the sort of like, warmth. You actually do meet people through people. Sorry, Jason. What was I into? They were really into Joy Division, how could you not be into Joy Division? New Order or Can, that sort of electronic based…which is sort of strange because obviously we're not an electronic band at all.

JASON: No, but it sounds very austere, doesn't it? I love the fact that all the songs kind of merge into one, almost. You might obviously view it differently but from the listener's point of view, I just love that solid presentation of sound. This is what we sound like. If you don't like it, fuck off.

SUE: Yeah. I almost feel that more now. Do you know what I mean? I was listening to much more, sort of like dancey… I'm laughing because some of it, I'm sort of, not embarrassed, but I mean just things like Prince, Missy Elliot, I remember at the time. I know the way I actually sound, it doesn't really reflect that at all.

JASON: No, that's fantastic. I love the fact you were listening to what was predominantly hip-hop and swing, R&B, know what I mean? Just fantastic.

SUE: Kylie Minogue, just things in the charts.

JASON: That's what stuck out. It's like you’ve just got this absolutely crisp voice, haven't you? It's like if you can imagine a turnpike that they use for BMXs or skateboards, where it just goes right all the way around and just encapsulates you. And also the harshness of it - it’s quite brutal as well isn't it?

SUE: My voice?

JASON: It's really resilient and it's really virtuous but at the same time also it struck me as quite sad as well and I think that both of those things combined really worked for the idea, I thought, definitely.

SUE: God, no one's ever said that about my voice at all.

JASON: It's quite mired in sadness, but at the same time there's this refusal to be totally taken by the darkness, so to speak.

SUE: Actually, last night, because I was thinking about what we might talk about, I was thinking about - it's not like I had a voice, if you see what I mean? I never sang or anything.

JASON: No, but I think you were an example of that kind of singer that wants to move away from convention but also at the same time it is quite Can-esque as well, the way that guy from Can sang. It is naturally just quite post-punky, isn't it? I fucking hate the word post-punk. People chucked it on us - it's like, I don't listen to fucking post-punk.

SUE: At the end of the day, and I do feel this with lots of other ways that I work, lots of it is rooted in personal emotion, actually feeling things, or denial.

JASON: I think they're both equally as important, aren't they? You can't have one without the other. I think you've got to explore all the facets of yourself, haven't you?

SUE: But it's something like sounding like I've never tried to sound like anyone else.

JASON: No.

SUE: Even though I could listen to so many other people for hours on repeat or the same song on repeat. I didn't know that I did sound the way I sound, which is weird. I don't know if you felt like that, Jason? Did you feel like you've always, I don't know, not sung…

JASON: I think it was better when I stopped singing and just started shouting. It certainly proved to be a bit more fruitful. I thought, "Okay. I feel better doing this."

SUE: Sort of letting something out, but with restraint, or not restraint?

JASON: Both. I’d also come to the end of my tether and was not feeling any musical genre at all. Everything just felt just too labored and just overexposed. So in some respects I suppose post-punk is quite apt because it doesn't necessarily mean it's post-punk-rock. I guess it just means post whatever was dominating the music scene and it’d become boring. You know what I mean?

SUE: Even like the words punk-rock sort of freaked me out a little bit. I'd rather have punk and rock and then put it together myself.

JASON: Which you did do, obviously.

SUE: I don't know, but definitely when I was in the band I was in, the only band I've been in, I was coming from a very different upbringing. Influences - I can hear them because of just that personal link to what you do, words I've written. I think about it. They might seem really as if I hadn't even thought about them, sort of freely splayed about or whatever, but it's just that mixture of feeling a sense of freedom or something.

JASON: The fact that you sent me a load of stuff on voice recorder - I pictured you going, "Right, we've had this conversation about the track so I've listened to it and what about this?” I just pictured you going into the kitchen leaning against the thing and just doing all this stuff on your phone, which is how it should be. That's totally it. It's like, yeah, this is so crude but in a good way, because I would be like that myself - “I've got these ideas. What about this?”

SUE: Actually Jason, funnily enough because I think I've said to you before, when we've met, the few times we've met and Andrew obviously, it's not often that I get sent a sort of song. It's never happened since I was with the band. So, Rough Trade sort of put us together or whatever and I was like, say yeah.

BEST FIT: It’s interesting what you two are saying about the vocal styles because I think you both kind of get coined with the sprechgesang label - this singing-talking delivery - and I think your projects have been quite influential in other artists following suit. I think especially Sue, I think the guitars in Life Without Buildings were very influential on a whole generation of indie bands in the early 00s. How do you both feel about being similarly influential from different decades?

SUE: God. I don't think like that. I feel embarrassed. Personally I don't, probably a bit of denial, bit of just what's happened since - your life continues, you do loads of stuff; you have children and things change. It's just not something I do - sit down and think or analyse it. It’s funny, I've always had to have a little bit of don't analyse it because if you did, just a really obvious thing, you wouldn't do it. So even if I write a load of crap and I look back at it, I can just rip it up and it's just a private thing.

JASON: When it comes to yourself, how you respond to this idea that you might have been influential, it’s a double-edged sword sometimes. I do actually think about it a lot and it's like, okay, it can be a positive thing and then it can be really annoying as well. It's like, I don't want to be associated with you. You're terrible. Fuck off. I want no part in that terrible music. Sorry. Bye.

SUE: Also, it's sort of like, something between freedom and responsibility, or something. Even doing our song together, I just felt a lot of freedom. You could have said, “Oh Sue, change it a bit.” But being open to sort of putting something out there, and what I mean about supposed responsibility is you're not responsible for how people respond to what you do. Some people are going to love it. Some people are going to think it's absolute crap.

JASON: How'd you cope with that? Are you all right with criticism?

SUE: I'm bad with it with my family…

JASON: Yeah, but I mean, you can't turn your family off though, can you?

SUE: Weirdly I'm sort of all right with it with work stuff because I think it's normal.

JASON: I feel the same now. A while ago I didn't, but now I do.

SUE: What you do doesn't suit everybody and that's okay.

JASON: You're bang right and it's taken me a long, long time to come to that conclusion, but you are right.

SUE: I'm trying to think of times when I've over-pleased. I think in retrospect you go, I knew that didn't sound right. Which I think probably is something about sadness or vulnerability, things like that - just being like a person who actually feels things. How do you deal with it, Jason?

JASON: I'm better with it now. You're right, it's like you're not going to be for everybody. I used to want to be able to be for everybody and I think that gets exhausting. You're just like, "God, I can't." Not everyone's going to like it. But that's all right.

SUE: I think it takes a long time and I don't think I've got there in a social situation - almost like going to a Christmas party or something. I can't remember the last Christmas party I actually went to, but it's a natural thing to want to be liked.

JASON: It is. Of course. Yeah, it is. I think when they start getting personal, if they don't like it and then they start getting personal, it's like, oh god, you don't need to do that. But even that's quite funny now. Somebody called us granddad's on crack the other day. I was just like, that's just fucking brilliant. Great granddad's on crack.

SUE: Just let it go - in a frozen way. Let it go.

JASON: But they're quite funny when they're like that.

SUE: The other day, Robert, who is the guitarist in the band I was in - we only ever had one album and probably about 14 songs, ever. So, we didn't have any more songs. That was it. And apparently we got this review from some guy, I don't know his name, but he was the editor of MOJO or something, I don't know. But he wrote something about how he loved the band but he hated my voice.

JASON: So this was around the time the album was released?

SUE: Yeah. And then Robert said he apparently got an apology on Twitter.

JASON: From the guy? Why? Because he now thinks that it sounds great?

SUE: I read it and I was like, to me that doesn't sound like an apology and I don't need an apology. You know what I mean? It was a really general thing like, I'm really sorry.

JASON: Some of them are real juiceless bastards aren’t they? It's like, for fuck sake, why are you in this game if you just want to be mean to people? You absolutely juiceless bastard.

SUE: But I sort of understand it, that thing of you really like the sound but you don't like the singer. Sort of how people separate stuff and go, I hate Morrissey but I love The Smiths.

JASON: Which is just stupid, isn't it? It's absolutely stupid. The Smiths without Morrissey would have been stupid. Same with you. You couldn't have had your band without you. It's like, there's absolutely no way.

SUE: Yeah. It's a funny one. It just made me think, God, if I ever had a magazine, which obviously I never will, but I'd never call it MOJO.

JASON: Yeah, and if I did have a magazine I’d pre-warn people that I was a juiceless, friendless twat. But going back to this original question, as soon as I heard your voice I knew that you would work, so much so that we've done two tunes, haven’t we? And we really are looking forward to this next tune coming out. It's not coming out yet, I don't know when it's coming out.

SUE: Wait, "Kato"? No way!

JASON: Yeah, of course it's being released. I'll release it myself if nobody wants to release it.

SUE: I loved it. I just really enjoyed being with you both.

JASON: It was fantastic, wasn't it? And sort of like, going into the Bristol studio, into Invada, it was just right, this is it. And you were like, "Yeah, that's fine." And right, we'll do it like this. “Yeah, that's fine.” Then you did, I don't know, a few takes and that was it. And we picked the one that all of us sort of agreed on, didn't we? I think having a cold added to it, didn't it?

SUE: I did have a bit of a cold, but I hadn't been in a studio like that with anybody. Do you know what I mean?

JASON: For a long time. I know. Cuz you were like, “Yeah, I'm a little bit nervy,” and I just kept forgetting about that - “Oh, it'll be all right. Don't worry.”

SUE: But I just felt really comfortable. I mean, I just got a bit excited because I'd never been to Invader before, but even like walking in and seeing a massive desk which is a minefield for me. I don't know how people do it.

JASON: Sure, sure, I don't even bother to even try to understand mixing desks. I just look at it and just think, that's just stupid. It's like clearly people are born to understand those things.

SUE: There's something about producer people - to me, the limited experience I've had, is they're really calm, nice people, or the best ones are. I found it a really calm environment. I've never been asked to sort of do bits in a song or something.

JASON: And I was really overjoyed that you had no problem with agreeing to do it. It was great. And we had that phone call, didn't we? That summer one Saturday afternoon I think, wasn't it? I was in the park with the kids. I was really chuffed that you wanted to do it because Jeff and Janette were sort of like, “We keep in contact with Sue, but she hasn't done anything for a while,” and I just hoped you'd be interested in it.

SUE: I had quite a long period, for different reasons, of saying no to quite a lot of stuff and usually I'd hope that I'd be someone who might say yes to quite a lot of stuff. Sometimes if you say yes to quite a lot of stuff then in retrospect things can get a little bit messy.

JASON: There's always something quite interesting about any offer of a collaboration, like, how can I work that? But yeah, you're right. Sometimes it's fair to say no, isn't it?

SUE: Some things can feel really sort of distant or something. I do get asked to do some bits but my urge is I really like writing and singing. I just found it really interesting the way you work, Jason. To me there's loads of structure, or just even how you structure a song, because I've never sort of made a song by myself. I found that really interesting how you literally just go right, I mean not like verse, chorus, verse, chorus.

JASON: But it literally is that - verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight or whatever, verse or end. I think that was in my mind with that, as soon as I heard some of those voice recordings you did. I thought that the bit you sent me, that's got to be the chorus and the other little ad libs that you did and we were kind of bouncing off each other on that, weren't we? Call and response. It was quite intense as well, wasn't it? Because obviously you were like, I haven't done this for a while and I'm like, right, this is it. Bang, bang, bang. And you just went with it.

SUE: But you're doing it in a nice way. It just felt like a very natural process. You'd written the bit about dead leaves - I just thought it's just total absolute instinct, I like how that reads. I like what I think it means.

JASON: You're walking through parks or whatever and there's just dead leaves on the floor. It's kind of autumn, things are wet and it's just full of dead leaves, isn't it?

SUE: I just found it really easy for you to go to me, “I've got this bit. Do you fancy trying this bit?” And then I was like, yeah, because it makes sense.

JASON: And this is what was great about it. It's about what works for the song, isn't it? It is largely powered by what we want, me and Andrew, but at the same time, it's like, would you mind doing this? I kept listening to your voice more and more and even the sonics on it, it was completely compatible and so in that sense half the battle’s won, in fact three quarters of the battle’s won.

Then it's just down to a mix of whether we get on, which we did, and also your acceptance of okay, I'll just largely be directed. But you had these obviously brilliant words that you'd done. Also with the outro and intro and with those, “You're not miserable, you're nice.” I mean, that's just fantastic. I mean, that's up there with “Keep calm and carry on.” As much as all those signs really annoy me.

SUE: I don't know where it came from.

JASON: I imagine, if the place did exist, heaven. It came down from the throws of the archangels, didn't it?

SUE: There's something about Andrew's rhythm or it was Andrew's sound? There's a bit that goes “do doo,” and I really immediately just loved that. So that was also brilliant and I thought it was really sort of quite hopeful and sad.

JASON: I think that's the idea behind it, of kind of struggle, which has a mixture of both of those things.

SUE: I think I was probably trying to make an echo or something of that, do doo. So that could have been any words, though.

JASON: I think also, the way Andrea Arnold captured it on video. I don't know how you feel about the video? You were getting into it when we last spoke, but I think she captured it perfectly. This kind of cold abandon. It's hard watching yourself, isn't it?

SUE: Yeah. I was just going to say for me, it's just not something I would…

JASON: You look fucking brilliant, Sue. You look fucking fantastic. I'm being honest with you, right? You look how Kurt Cobain wished he looked. Do you know what I mean? You just look totally brilliant. And the way she positioned you on that green.

SUE: If I haven't watched it very much, it's purely because I'm probably quite self-critical about myself.

JASON: It's never nice, is it? And there's not a lot of people that can tell you any different about that because I think it's a personal thing. The reaction to yourself, to your own image is a personal thing and other people shouldn't try to intervene and change that for you.

SUE: How do you find it?

JASON: I think I look like an over-glamorized darts player most of the time. I think I look like a darts player that's just won two-hundred grand or something, and he's trying to better himself and the way he looks and he's been to the gym a bit and he's cut down on chips. All I see when I look at myself in pictures is when you're a kid watching your family get pissed at Christmas and they're all just shouting at each other? I just see that. So, it's just as uncomfortable because I'm assuming you feel quite uncomfortable?

SUE: Yeah. Because I've done a lot of, and again it's this weird word like “performance” which I do think, it's a very rooted art gallery art thing. So I've done a lot of those and they've probably been filmed a lot. I'm used to being filmed, but I never watch anything back. So yeah, this feels like quite a big shift because I don't even know if I will watch our video very much, but that's probably because of me.

JASON: Yeah. I tend to watch them about two or three times and that's it. What I tried to do is detach myself from it and just see the bigger picture of it like the aesthetic and I think the location, which was where Andrea grew up - which also felt really familiar to me as a kid growing up in estateesque areas where the shops look the same as the flats and everything else. So, I think it really added to it. It was something really bizarre also about the locals and also the dancers that were in it, all added to this melancholy.

SUE: Yeah, it sort of got bigger and bigger.

JASON: It was almost really beautiful but obviously not ignoring the idea that a lot of the time life's quite sad. There's a lot of mist, a lot of fog, which it carries beautifully I think.

SUE: I don't know if I said to you on the day but where I was brought up in Leighton Buzzard, which is probably quite a nice town - it's a commuter town and 25 minutes from London. This is funny, Jason. I've never thought about this, but this sort of group of shops or something that actually people do use, they are there, they are hanging out. There's good things going on. There's some…

JASON: Some bad things. I think the darkness came from the flags, but it was as if the community were almost resilient to them because you had all these different social groups. You had people of different ethnic backgrounds all mixing together, all ages as well, generations - there were really old people talking to lots of young people, blah blah blah. So it was like you got this sense of community. And then you had these flags, and this idea that people are trying to control you and the greater body of the human race is indifferent to it and just piss off.

SUE: But actually when your feet are on the ground and you're just talking to people it's brilliant. Is she happy with it as well?

JASON: I spoke to her briefly about it and she's happy with it. What really struck me was that she doesn't normally do videos for bands and said yes to this which I thought was really something. I was really blown away by that, and you've got to watch yourself haven't you? It's like, you don't want to blow too much smoke up someone's arse because they might get suspicious. I've got a lot of time for Andrea.

SUE: I've never been in a video.

JASON: Did you not do any for the band?

SUE: No, we weren't really at that point, I don't think. But I really enjoyed it. I just had such a nice time. I was thinking about the fact it's called “No Touch.” Why is it called “No Touch?”

JASON: Because of this idea of isolation. People always said to me, “You don't like it when people try and hug - you back away,” and I used to think no I don't, but I do, and there's reasons for that which I'm not going into. What was interesting was to talk about that in a broader sense of what that is. It's not just myself, it's all of us isn't it? We are to a certain degree almost quite lonely and I know that's a narrative that is well discussed throughout intelligent conversation, that we are all on our own sort of thing, but even more so these days I think.

SUE: It's weird because when I think about no touch, I think when I'm singing or something, genuinely I'm trying to reach out. So I actually do want the touch.

JASON: Of course. Yes. And it's that struggle, isn't it? That's what makes you even more cut off and lonely is the fact that we're also told that it's really hard now to install yourself in anything that's in a mindset of warmth, of contentment, of happiness. We're not only told that these are big problems in society but we're also told at the same time that it's directly connected to you as well. It's like you are part of this, if I've explained myself there. This idea that you're suffering but here's something else to make you suffer even more.

SUE: I suppose maybe the word to mind is like a battle and some days you have days where it's like a good battle - it might be lots of other things that you're sort of just dealing with, and that affects how you deal with other people.

JASON: I think the isolation act is the kind of insulation behind the brick wall. You've got your soul and then this insulation and a brick wall and then the world outside and it's trying to transcend those, isn’t it?

SUE: There’s something about keeping yourself protected, but also being warm enough to be able to connect. I totally get what you mean about sort of insulating yourself and then isolating yourself and then what happens next after that and how it affects your work, how it I suppose directly affects you.

JASON: I think also this is fatigue. We're just out of energy, aren't we? Generally as a society, I think we're quite flattened out. It's as if someone's just ironed us, isn't it? I think that's what I was trying to get with the song as well a little bit. I think the flags especially were really strong in the video. I think it gives you that yin and yang type thing. You know what I mean? The negative and the positive.

SUE: When you sent me the song to begin with I just really liked the tone.

JASON: You nailed it.

SUE: I liked it.

JASON: It worked, totally.