You’d rightly expect to find many post-punk bands these days performing within the turbulent bowels of cities across the country – London, Manchester, Birmingham. Understandably, Oxford may not be a town that perhaps springs to mind. Yet the Montreal-hailing band Ought drastically altered this perception.
The master blenders of art-punk, post-punk, and noise rock, took to the stage at The Bullingdon on a bitterly cold night last Friday, promoting their latest LP, Room Inside the World. For a venue this intimate, it may surprise one to know that this band are, in fact, 3 LPs and 3 EPs deep into their discography yet were only playing to a crowd size of roughly 100. Nevertheless, this set proved Ought as one of the most underrated punk bands of this decade with their unique blend of musical styles, catchy refrains, and poignant lyricism remarking on topics of toxic masculinity and banality of everyday life.
For their latest LP, the band most noticeably swapped out their screeching guitars and frontman Tim Darcy’s high-pitched nasally voice, for slower tempos and bass-trodden vocals (as well as extra instrumentation of clarinets and saxophones). The set began with the first track of this LP ‘Into The Sea’ which plunged into their catchy sound featuring off-beat drum patterns, rolling guitar riffs, and melodic choruses which immediately infected the audience.
Darcy’s cries of ‘demarcation’ continued the set into one of the band’s most popular songs of the latest LP, ‘Disgraced in America’, showcasing their assertive statement against Trump’s immigration policies. The following two tracks ‘These 3 Things’ and ‘Desire’ also featured turning points to Ought’s stylistic sounds from their previous work: the former containing metallic rhythmic vibraphone beats and heavy use of synth chord progressions, and the latter incorporating choirs and freestyle jazz instrumentation in the backdrop of this art-punk song. In spite of these changes, the audience fully immersed themselves in the more intricate and bassier grooves encompassing them.
The latter half of their set almost fully diverged from their more muted tones of Room Inside The World, to the more rambunctious sounds of their past work which the audience were notably more familiar with. The band’s anti-patriarchal track ‘Men For Miles’ seamlessly picked up the set’s tempo with the crowd’s synchronised jiving and bopping along to Darcy’s refrains of ‘there were men for miles…doesn’t it just bring a tear to your eye?’. The dive into this set of work continued with ‘Habit’ and ‘Beautiful Blue Sky’ – some of the most popular songs the band has recorded to date with their lyrical commentary on western societal norms. These tracks were undoubtedly popular with the small Oxfordian audience, not only for their lyrical resonation but also their combination of rhythmic grooves and spoken word, which Darcy has recounted on being the inception of his artistic career.
The slight lull in their set, unfortunately, came just before the set’s encore with such slower-tempoed tracks as ‘Passionate Turn’ and ‘Disaffection’, but retrospectively, this ultimately set up Ought’s encore for a flourishing finale. ‘The Weather Song’ returned Ought’s sound to an upbeat one, with fast-paced verses transcending into effervescent choruses. Following this trope was the final song of the night – ‘Today, More Than Any Other Day’, with an apt slow-builder of a song lurching into a frantic, chaotic spiral of energy with Darcy exclaiming ‘we’re sinking deeper, and sinking deeper, and sinking deeper!’. Revisiting the banality of everyday life in this song, Darcy portrays this through a grocery shopping trip, featuring one of my favourite lyrics: ‘today, more than any other day, I am prepared to make a decision between 2% and whole milk’. The track’s infectious energy and relevant lyrical content was the perfect way to end this chilly Friday night in Oxford, allowing the crowd to revel in Ought’s utmost cynicism and raw energy.
Whilst Ought may not be the most popular post-punk band of this decade, I have high admiration for their unconventional song structures and willingness to speak on such shared topics of concern in today’s society. Underlying this with their erratic guitar riffs and incorporation of various noise-rock genres across their discography, I hope Ought continue their sonic evolution and remain flag-bearers of their niche genre, filling out niche rooms, within niche towns all over the world. In spite of the set’s slight lull, Ought impressively conjured their latest LP Room Inside the World, with an otherworldly set inside one of Oxford’s smallest rooms.
8/10
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