Brighton’s ARXX have gone from playing small rooms to an enthusiastic UK fanbase to supporting major headliners at the Royal Albert Hall and Eventim Apollo, and to playing their music overseas in an ever-growing number of countries.
And in Good Boy they have a new album out today that will reaffirm (if reaffirmation was ever needed) their status as one of the UK’s most cherish-able musical units.
At a recent secret hometown gig in Brighton, Hanni introduced a rare performance of their old set closer ‘Iron Lung’ with the playful comment “do you remember when we used to be a rock band?” It was said in fun (I hope!), but it’s true to say that ARXX in 2024 have a different musical mindset to the one that propelled early classics like ‘Masters Of Device’ and ‘Intervention’ back in 2018. The pop sensibilities were always there, even so – and it is not such a huge leap from an early anthem like ‘Stuck On You’ to ‘Crying In The Carwash’, one of Good Boy‘s ‘teaser’ singles from earlier in the year.
Hanni has steadily ramped up their skills as a songwriter to a point where pure pop has become the dominant factor in ARXX’s soundscape. It has been growing for a while, via classics like ‘Baby Uh Huh’ and ‘Not Alone’ – the latter being as wonderful a pop song as anyone has written and recorded in the last 60 years. If it’s fair to say that 2023’s Ride Or Die album displayed a duo flirting seriously with oncoming greatness, Good Boy is the affirmation that ARXX is very possibly the best pop band of the 21st Century…
…Anyway, that was then, this is now, and all that. So, what can the listener expect from Good Boy that they haven’t heard already in several great 45s that have preceded its release? Well, lots more of the same really – and for this writer’s money, not just the same, but in many cases even better. It’s almost as if Hanni and Clara have been saving their best new stuff for album buyers, which starts on a high with the aforementioned ‘Carwash’ and just gets better as the tracks whizz by.
“This album is queer in its very nature; everything about it is queer and you can’t get away from it. The songs are very personal, and a celebration of being who you want to be in whatever way that manifests, and being fucking honest about it. By the time you get to your thirties, you think you should know yourself by now. But actually, you continue to learn about yourself the entire time.” – Hanni Pidduck
By the time it reaches the grand finale (and it is pretty grand, believe me) of the bittersweet banger ‘Love Me Again’, the urge to go right back to the start and play it all again is pretty irresistible.
‘Bittersweet Bangers’ might actually have made a good title for the album (or for somebody’s future album, if that someone is you, feel free to have that on me…). Hanni is nothing if not a hopeless romantic at heart and many of Good Boy‘s best tracks – like the sublime power ballad ‘Dublin’ – hide their abject melancholy beneath a massive wall of sound.
Hanni knows what a difference a good chorus makes – and always has done if I’m being honest – and almost everything here has one that you will find yourself singing along with after a minimum number of listens. I’ve had the simple, catchy refrain of the relaxed ‘Baby Berlin’ going round in my head since I first heard it. So will you.
There isn’t a band in the world that doesn’t have influences, but the art of great songwriting is in making your songs not sound like direct copies of those you admire. Hanni’s compositions have long since transcended that scenario, but the pair’s love of great pop songs is patently obvious at live shows when they break out covers of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ and Cher’s ‘Believe’, and perform them with the same zeal as their originals. There are no covers on “Good Boy”, but there are plenty of songs here that “next-generation” bands could find themselves covering if they want to guarantee at least one anthemic number in their sets.
“When we play live we’re still heavier than your average pop band, but I think that’s exciting. Then on record, we have a lot of freedom and we don’t inhibit ourselves.” – Hanni
Good Boy is a quantum leap forward from anything ARXX has committed to tape this far. It should be on every playlist on every radio station in the UK and beyond, and a pox on any that do not add it immediately. There will be something seriously amiss if it isn’t in the shake-up – at the very least – for any and every music award that it’s eligible for next year. I positively insist that you rush out and buy a copy today. Buy one for each ear in, fact. You will be very glad you did.
Good Boy is out on Submarine Cat Records today.
UK & EU Headline Tour Dates:
Oct 13, 2024 AB Club // Brussels, BE
Oct 15, 2024 Exil // Zurich, CH
Oct 16, 2024 Arci Bellezza // Milan, IT
Oct 18, 2024 Strom // Munich, DE
Oct 19, 2024 Hole 44 // Berlin, DE
Oct 20, 2024 Bahn of Pauli // Hamburg, DE
Oct 22, 2024 Bar Brooklyn // Stockholm, SE
Oct 24, 2024 Ideal Bar Vega // Copenhagen, DK
Oct 27, 2024 Tolhuistuin // Amsterdam, NL
Oct 28, 2024 Gebäude 9 // Cologne, DE – SOLD OUT
Oct 30, 2024 Supersonic // Paris, FR – SOLD OUT
Nov 1, 2024 Deaf Institute // Manchester, UK – SOLD OUT
Nov 2, 2024 University // Newcastle, UK
Nov 3, 2024 King Tuts // Glasgow, UK
Nov 5, 2024 O2 Institute2 // Birmingham, UK
Nov 6, 2024 Lafayette // London, UK
Nov 7, 2024 The Fleece // Bristol, UK
Nov 10, 2024 The Button Factory // Dublin, IE
Nov 23, 2024. Concorde 2 // Brighton, UK