Kid Kapichi – “There Goes The Neighbourhood” (Released 15th March 2024)

Produced by Dom Craik from UK chart-toppers Nothing But Thieves, There Goes The Neighbourhood is the third studio album from Kid Kapichi, their second for Spinefarm.

The album features eleven signature tracks about misspent youth and nights out in small towns, songs you can protest or party to in equal measure. Like movie director Guy Ritchie, a global force who remains true to his Brit roots, the Hastings quartet are determined to hold tight to their homegrown values and beliefs, and to take their songs of working-class pride to the broadest possible audience. Says frontman Jack Wilson about lead single ‘Let’s Get To Work’, “It’s a motivational song about getting a job done yourself,“ an important sentiment when support networks are eroding; it’s classic Kapichi, music and message combining to powerful effect, setting the mood for an album where the snarling, razor-sharp lyrics are generally balanced out by a cheeky wink of the eye and the turn of a Crombie-d collar. On ‘Zombie Nation’, a track featuring the unmistakable tones of Madness legend Suggs, a longstanding Kapichi hero, the band spotlight social and political apathy in the face of dark times, and their collective stance against grey Britain and small-island thinking is one that runs throughout the record, in particular ‘Can EU Hear Me?’, a three-minute, Brexit-bemoaning blast of spirited punk. Closing track, Jimi, an acoustic ode to a fallen friend, adds a different flavour, but generally Kid Kapichi are more raised fist than velvet glove. They’re not a band–actually, make that gang–you’d feel comfortable meeting in a dark alley, but at least you’d see their white socks coming!