Louise Distras - 'Black Skies' Single Review

Anger is an energy, and if you’re not pissing someone off then you’re probably doing something wrong. You’ve become compliant and have robably already had your details willingly entered on a spreadsheet of conformance. The revolution is dead, Che Guevara is a poster image while Lydon shouts about his life being commercialised long after he sold himself out. While we all suffered through lockdown, the rich got richer and seemed to just do whatever they wanted to do in an even more brazen fashion like they couldn’t care less about you. Let’s face it, they don’t. You’re just another cog, another mouth to suck their collective cocks. Louise Distras spent the past few years frustrated watching the world spiral out of control. The Brexit fallout has left a country divided while our government made sure it was busy looking after itself while ignoring the rules it set out for you. Welcome to a post-Covid cruel Britannia. ‘Black Skies’ is a taste of what to come. Steve Ignorant, founder of Crass and godfather to the anarchist Punk scene, opens the song with a short spoken word piece, lamenting the end of society with the lines ‘The dream is over, there’s no escape”. The music then kicks in, a dub-punk guitar driven track, fuelled by a smouldering petrol bomb that explodes on contact with the chorus. Distras’ vocals are direct and to the point, her voice raw from the years of dissent, as if they’ve been hung out to dry in the ice cold wind blowing between abandoned tower blocks. The chorus lines “Punk don’t work / People aren’t free / There is no democracy” are spat out after a feral, wounded howl. Anger drives the song, but so does a sense of disappointment. It's not the wild, swinging fury of youth, more the measured deliberate questioning of someone who wants and needs answers. Distras is only echoing what we all see while looking out of the bedroom window. We’ve all looked for saviours in the past few years to find most of them vapid and empty. It’s time to find a way to protest by using whatever method you have at your disposal. ‘Black Skies’ draws from our collective anger and channels it into 190 seconds of focused fury. I’ll be interested in seeing what she does next.