Album Review: Fashion Tips 'DO YOU EVEN LIKE MUSIC?'

Intrinsically leftfield and anthemic, Fashion Tips’ second album is an all-encompassing sprint through focused, innovative genre sounds and gripping industry diatribes. 

Such is the restless creativity of Fashion Tips that their second album was ready a long time ago. However, due to predictably odious industry woes, they struggled to find a home. The album was propelled over the finish line by a self-release, live debuts and singles getting sasscore salivary glands dripping. Despite the percussive engine of their debut album, this is even more exceptional; more lyrically eviscerating, varied, and an immersive equilibrium of slick yet cantankerous production, with just as much hook-ecstasy, Fashion Tips load their noise-punk with more synths (the most they’ve used), and effectively niche ideas, than members of The Fall. 

Esme and Liam’s development and quality as songwriters, alongside new guitarist Callan Dance, is glaring. 'Nothing Personal’s' huge, live-primed chorus is contrasted with 'It Doesn’t Take A Genius', loaded with nuance in the jagged way delivery of ‘make the call, put the phone down’. Where the latter shows the growth of her vocals, the former takes the band’s incisive synths and samples to new extremes, melodically pursuing a narrative of rugged determination through social stagnation. While the primal track is the album’s best banger, there’s also room for Esme’s greatest lyrics, 'perfect serpent, talks like a snake and fucks like a knife in the dark’ a centrepiece of enigmatic poetry and direct character assassination. 

While withering lyrics like these are formidable yet abstract, others use Esme’s most personal insights. There’s still space for listener interpretations within such nimble, economic writing. On the subtly Oingo Boingo 'Non-Stop Neurotic Cabaret' she details a friend, Cara, crucial in moulding the person heard today. Another friend’s discussion of Huggy Bear, like experiences of shared femininity with Cara, is incredibly moving as a moment of solace. The chorus’s expression of childhood trauma, paired with Harry Pussy yowling and cascading synth keys, hits like a record shop’s worth of ‘90s hardcore. The theme is still open, though: whether interpreted as a backlash against conservative suppression of trans inclusion or a broader critique of attacks on youth-centric freedoms, the narrative remains amorphous and gripping. 

The illustrative imagery goes back to the first track, where the vocals are as inventive as quick-witted put-downs like “costume change, a new look on your face”, switching from spoken drawl to smooth singing, to maintain the light and dark contrast. Here, the Ultravox-type bass crunch versus the synth’s evocation of dance-punk legends !!! heightens the speedy dynamic variety, completing this masterful display of genre. 

Although the second track’s idiosyncratic hyperpop gets close, the blistering dervish of a closer is the most Melt Banana. It rises high above recycling, owing to the riff’s almost supernatural balance of catchiness and discordance (showing the impact of their latest member), a more western psych-oriented part than the Japanese duo. 

Despite the travails attached to the album’s titular question – frequent label rejections leading to existential struggles about the band and music itself – Fashion Tips have gratuitously outdone their debut album and their peers; the barnstorming rhythmic energy, evergreen melodies, and profound imagery about internal and external pain, is a constant party emphasising the redemptive joy of that sweaty basement euphoria.

Words by James Kilkenny (@jameskilk1499). Album artwork by James Watts and Esmé.