THE EMPTY PAGE: “It’s political, personal, passionate and, I hope, important.”
MANCHESTER alt-punks THE EMPTY PAGE have just released the video for new single ‘Cock Of The Fifth Year,’ taken from the forthcoming ‘Imploding’ album, due May 10th via Vociferous Records.
“’Cock of the fifth year’ is what we called the biggest jock types when I was in high school,” explains frontwoman, Kel Page.
“Cocky, brash loud and overly confident. Puffed up and swaggering and often quite intimidating. I liked the name for a song and wrote it initially about a cartoonish bloke who unselfconsciously uses up all the space available and makes others feel shoved out of the way. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of blokes like that I encounter when walking around my home city of Manchester. Swaggering, mouthy bellends who can be pretty intimidating when you’re a woman just trying to get from ‘a to b.’
“I was thinking about the idea that being a big deal in high school is the peak of some people’s lives. I hated school with a passion and my own Ife has got better and better as my school days have receded in the rearview. Seems a weird flex now to have been a big deal in high school.”
The Empty Page released debut album ‘Unfolding’ in 2016 and it was never their intention to leave a follow up that long, but founding member and original drummer Jim Cattell left the band during the recording process due to ill health, before the pandemic, and ‘life’ got in the way. Some one-off songs and seven-inch single releases kept the fire and desire to play burning, signalling the path to new album, ‘Imploding.’
“People often describe our sound as anxious, urgent, angular,” added Page. “I think it’s all of those things because that’s what the inside of my brain looks like. But I think it’s lush and beautiful at times too. I hope people can hear the whole gamut of emotions in this record. It’s political, personal, passionate and, I hope, important.”
Catch THE EMPTY PAGE live:
May 10 London, The Night Owl
May 16 Manchester, Yes Basement
DETAILS: Merch – The Empty Page (theemptypageband.com)
