300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks have made the most fun album of the year

The duo’s contrasting screamo rap vocals and a bassline productions debut album on XL Recordings is a salve to today’s polite-sounding music landscape.

Taking inspiration from 2000s genres screamo, chiptune and bassline, THIS IS SPA TOWN! is one of the brightest music releases of the year, spilling with energy, youthful verve and giddy sonics.

In an age where everyone’s public Instagram is manicured, filtered and curated, the debut album from 300SkullsAndCounting and Jenny Sparks is akin to reopening a messy Bebo account and sprawling nonsense and in-jokes over your friend’s wall.

Sometimes you just need to listen to something big, dumb and really well done – not over think it and pump out the jams. THIS IS SPA TOWN! , the just-released 22-minute debut album from two spa town dwellers is a refreshingly unburdened listen.

Pots and pans music.

300SkullsAndCounting is a screamo vocalist from Leamington Spa in Warwick with a penchant for 8-bit video game music, a love of Hadouken from the UK DIY emo scene while Jenny Sparks is a bassline producer from London who built his sound in a series of DIY studios, including an old hospital hearing-test room and a shed in the back garden of an ex-care home.

The pair met by chance in a living room in Stratford, London, while 300Skulls was doing fingerboard tricks and Jenny was whacking a light off the ceiling, and they made a bassline remix of 300Skulls’s song ‘Eagle vs. Sheagle’.

For the next eight months 300Skulls travelled to London from Warwickshire almost every weekend with lyrics and melodies, while Jenny spent the week in his studio shed obsessing over low-end design and developing a mega sour sweets habit.

Across nine tracks, one throws a mosh pit at the other’s bouncy low end, and the songs give off the energy of a teenage bedroom rave meets glitched emo gig.

Some initially resisted the exuberance in favour of hating and handwringing, but like The Fader, they are now admitting that it’s “good, actually”, or “i’ve decided i’m done pretending 2 hate it“, and when the music is this fun, you have to let your postured cool go completely and not overthink it. This is music that slaps.

The forgotten whiplash of a shouty, giddy, deliberately daft record that reminds you that music can just be a laugh with your mates in a room is understandable. Not every band needs to be handled like a monument, not every band has to have an opinion about everything. Not every band has longevity (but hey even Welsh comedy rap lads Goldie Lookin’ Chain are still kicking it).

Sometimes, you got to let the internet children be internet children and rap about “cowboy USBs” over raspy metallic acid screamo bassline, as you hear on opening track ‘100% Legal Intro’, which leads to the baroque digicore bounce of ‘Kill You In The Bace’ which rallies against shit promoters and venues – “no collab post if the night’s not sick enough,” and interpolates My Chemical Romance, into the weirdo kid crew shoutout of ‘The Ballad of St. Nick’s Park’.

Between calling the local takeaway and developing a rapport with the order guy on the interludes, they rap about selling their granny’s pocket watch over a squelchy dubstep bassline and steel pans on ‘I Have the Pineapple’, enthusing about strong cider over chiptune beats on ‘Can Of K’.

The album ends with “Are Mum’ in a song for their mams who don’t get the music – “I know you love me, but you don’t love the low end / All you ever listen to is fucking Leonard Cohen.”

THIS IS SPA TOWN! isn’t music for your average Fontaines fan, there will be no Amble or Kingfishr crossover here, Olivia Dean and Sam Fender are not getting a Jenny Sparks remix. In a year where concertgoers are shitting their pants, 300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks are pissing all over the competition and have released the most fun record of the year. If you hate this, you hate having a good time.

THIS IS SPA TOWN! tracklist

1. 100 Legal Intro
2. Kill You in the Bace
3. The Ballad of St Nick’s Park
4. I Have the Pineapple
5. Ribeye 1
6. Turned Out to Be A Cannon
7. Can of K
8. Ribeye 2
9. Are Mum’s

300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks live

The pair play a debut headline tour of the UK and Europe this month. There are no Irish dates on this run.

• Friday October 9th – The White Hotel, Manchester.
• Saturday October 10th – Glasgow (venue TBA).
• Wednesday October 14th – Strange Brew, Bristol.
• Thursday October 15th – Club Cheek, London.
• Wednesday October 21st – Garage Noord, Amsterdam.
• Thursday October 22nd – La Station – Gare des Mines, Paris.
• Saturday October 24th – Kelsey’s, Leamington Spa.

THIS IS SPA TOWN! is out now on XL Recordings.