With their origins in a "cold, damp warehouse in Manchester", The Empty Page, a duo made up of Kel (bass and vocals) and Giz (guitar), like to play on that vibe, producing what they describe as anxious, noisy music. I'd describe it, and particularly their newest release, as something along the lines of: damn good sounds, speaking right into my heart, uplifting it while at the same time helping me admit my weaknesses.
'Big Nasty Palpitations' has a delicious and fabulously satisfying 'live' kind of feel; it's just soaked in honest, firm, raw energy. This feels like music for right here, right now, no messing around.
The song arrives through your speakers (or earbuds or whatever), in a rush of angular, tense guitars over a thrummy bass line and urgent drums. There's an enveloping sense of creeping menace, heightened by a swirling flange effect on the guitars. The band's producer Morton Kong, of Eve Studios in Stockport, clearly understood the brief and has helped delivered something which sounds absolutely immediate.
Kel delivers a couple of slightly hushed but pushy, hard-hitting lines - "The weak are the meat, that the strong eat; the poor are the meat, that the rich eat" - before the guitars introduce a fabulous jangly riff. This pushes the tension up a further notch every time it recurs throughout the track.
The song just relentlessly surges on from there - no let up - emphasising and underlining the emotive force behind the writing. This is interspersed, without diminishing the pace, with bursts of outraged feeling. "Big! Nasty! Palpitations!" jumps out before the choruses, which riff on the title lyric. The only relief from this wave of feeling is right at the end when everything falls away, leaving only a subtle whirring, like the sound of our minds finally spinning off into the void.
'Big Nasty Palpitations' is a kind of masterclass in expressing a feeling in music - forming something almost palpable out of sound and lyric.
The theme of the song is clearly based on and rooted in the individual and collective anxiety which many of just can't help feeling in these crazy times we live in. "The world is run by terrifying people who have little regard for us powerless humans who are just trying to get on with our lives," the band say, telling of how writing the song helped get those negative feelings out. But - in that transcendent way that music does - it also possesses a healing quality for us who listen.
The track was released during Mental Health Awareness Week, with Kel writing on social media about their own long-running struggle with anxiety. "I have some coping mechanisms now but sometimes they still fail. That’s often when I write lyrics. My last resort. Writing Big Nasty Palpitations helped me. I hope listening to it helps you."
I hear you. And yes, it did.
You can find out more about The Empty Page on their website. Listen to the new single below, and let me - and the band - know your thoughts.