AGENT PROVOCATEURS: I Am The Agent on stage at the Cambridge Hotel. Image by RJB Images
There is an incredible band from Newcastle that all discerning music lovers should be aware of: I Am The Agent. I have written their press bio, so take a peek below for my attempt to explain the dynamic complexities of their sound.
No linear adjectival thread of description does I Am The Agent justice. For every brutal breakdown, tortured howl and obtuse piece of twisted poetry is a gentle interlude, a sweetly subtle melody and a direct, unmistakable sentiment.
The Newcastle-based four-piece weave tightly constructed rock songs. But each track feels on the verge of emotional collapse. Everything could come crashing down at any second.
The band penned debut album Stay Drunk between March and October 2012. Expect its release by the end of 2013, as it follows on the prolific group’s stellar series of well-received, independently released and self-recorded EPs.
In Stay Drunk’s mixture of influences are jazz, folk, rock and the heart-on-sleeve chaos of their post-hardcore, post-rock and emo beginnings.
Singer Michael Gale has a voice wrought with both anguish and quiet reflection. On the colossal opus ‘Birds in My Mouth’, we hear a man at the mercy of forces both external and internal – and a band that seemingly have no floor to the depths of their creative ideas.
I Am The Agent’s songs are built on foundations of dynamics, the designs of which are utterly inventive and savagely engaging. And just when you think you have each song worked out, you realise I Am The Agent have different intentions.
Sonically, the four members of the band have mutated the proto-folk ethos and mutated it into a much heavier creature. Somewhere in the tumult you can hear echoes of Manchester Orchestra, At The Drive-In or Bright Eyes, but any standard comparison to those acts is just as misleading.
‘Your Parents’ sounds as though it was composed in the deep, bottomless darkness of the sub-conscious, borne of raw, unprocessed emotion, still finding shape.
Of the album’s lyrical themes, Gale offers subject matter as abstract and diverse as the band’s sound.“It follows your typical lyrical contexts, such as love lost, drug factories, theft and arson, naked wrestling, awkward sexual encounters, and drunken adventures – both fictitious and real,” Gale says.
Stay Drunk is an utterly intoxicating experience.
Meadowlake Street 