“Thick Skin” is off False Heads’ new album Sick Moon, available September 30, 2022 via Scruff of the Neck Records. The group’s garage-grunge inspired track takes aim at the current political climate and the incessant hopelessness and rage that bubbles over on social media. Sick Moon was Produced by Frank Turner, at his home studio. False Heads have played with The Libertines, Josh Homme and Band of Skulls, and the legendary Iggy Pop has gone so far as to endorse the band as “young, talented and going places.”

Speaking of the new track frontman Luke Griffiths explains:

“”Thick Skin” is about how much I f****** hate the current political discourse. To me, politics seems to be completely and utterly middle-class from left to right — class has been seemingly removed from a lot of left-wing politics.

It’s also about social media politics. That kind of rage and vitriol is some form of lashing out for mental health problems and it’s like a form of addictive behaviour. I understand this, dealing with depression and having a history of drug abuse, and I understand how difficult it is to not let that rage inside you come out in vicious ways. But I just feel like social media has allowed a million different forms of religion, nationalism and tribalism to be completely normalised. Our brains are rotting and there is no hope, and every time I feel like there is I’m stung again.”

Of the story behind upcoming album, Luke adds:

“The album is just a pure expression of everything I’ve felt and feel. It’s pure rage, isolation, and alienation, yet also sarcastic and hopefully sprinkled with a bit of humour. It’s a stream of consciousness I used to deal with my struggles with depression, insomnia, anxiety, and issues with substance abuse.

It’s also about how often the external world seems to parallel and affect your internal struggle. I get trapped into a cycle of apathy and suffocation with the idea of eternalism and eternal recurrence: maybe we have no free will and maybe we do all of this again and again, forever. Humans aren’t meant to have access to every piece of information on the planet at once. I’ve felt frustration over the last five years in the music industry; rock and pop music have become an endeavour for kids from super-rich families or kids from parents already in the industry.”

FALSE HEADS 2022 LIVE DATES

JULY
31 – Y Not? Festival, Derbyshire

OCTOBER
01 – Muther’s Studio, Birmingham
02 – World Headquarters, Newcastle
04 – Hug and Pint, Glasgow
05 – The Grand Social, Dublin
06 – Voodoo, Belfast
07 – Monroe’s Live, Galway
11 – Bodega, Nottingham
12 – Venn St Social, Huddersfield
13 – Night & Day Cafe, Manchester
14 – Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield
17 – The Exchange, Bristol
18 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
19 – 60 Million Postcards, Bournemouth
20 – Oslo, London
21 – The Hope & Ruin, Brighton
26 – Neues Schauspiel
27 – Backstage Cub, Stuttgart
28 – Yard Club, Cologne
31 – Headcrach, Hamburg

NOVEMBER
1 – Cassiopeia, Berlin
2 – Melkweg, Amsterdam