Interview: Desperate Journalist

London post-punk doyens discuss the making of 2024s best album, No Hero

Desperate Journalist Twenty twenty-four’s finest album, No Hero saw London post-punk / indie noir specialists Desperate Journalist pushing their sound forwards with their strongest material to date. Featuring the band’s hallmarks, Rob Hardy’s exemplary guitar work, Simon Drowner’s plangent basslines, Caz Helbert’s pinpoint drumming, all piloted by Jo Bevan’s stunning voice, the disc incorporated new textures into the group’s sonic tapestry whilst retaining their supreme skill at lyrical hooks and anthemic choruses.

Named after The Cure's brilliantly acerbic takedown of an NME journalist, the indie icons are fans of the band, with Robert Smith inviting them to the launch gig for Songs of A Lost World at the Troxy last November. On the road to plug the LP, Desperate Journalist’s recent tranche of live shows culminated with a spectacular gig in their own manor at legendary stomping ground, The Garage in Highbury last month. More dates are set to follow in March, with fixtures in Germany and the Netherlands.

The group’s fifth LP, No Hero saw the outfit employ a new songwriting methodology, composing on synthesizers. Did using synths at the writing stage open new doors for the band? “Yes, very much so and perhaps more importantly it kept us interested in writing something new” Rob says. “I find it really important to be interested in and excited by new things we write and really dislike retreading old ground without a very good reason. Sometimes that happens and the music feels strong enough for it to work, but over the course of an album I need to be able to find a point to it. We used only a couple of analogue synths, so what you can hear is basically us trying to work the things out with more piano informed chords. I think it opened up more possibilities for Jo and I to write together from the start as well and use more repetitive harmonic structures than we might have done had it been written on guitar. Unsympathetic being perhaps the prime example of that”.



Another new development saw Rob stepping up to be sole producer for the first time, after production duties on previous album Maximum Sorrow! were handled by the group. How different was it being sole producer on the record? “Not that different in many ways but mostly because so much of the writing had been informed by the synths" the guitarist says. "A lot of the sonic space was pretty defined, most of the music for Underwater is just the demo that Jo and I did at home for example. I learned a lot from recording with Rollo (Smallcombe, our engineer with a really great ear for arrangement) on the last record, where he really encouraged us to keep asking why parts existed. This led to quite a significant stripping back of guitar parts in particular. Most of the time there is a single guitar part and perhaps a synth line whereas before there was often layers of probably superfluous bits and pieces fighting each other”.

In addition to changing their songwriting approach, a new MO was sought with recording too. “The other thing that was really interesting about doing this record is that we never played many of the tracks together before going into the studio” Rob explains. “Previously, everything had pretty much been nailed in rehearsal before going anywhere near recording, which I think often meant we essentially did fancied up live versions of songs. Most of the new ones I think of as truer arrangements which we have then gone back to and had to significantly rearrange in many ways to be able to present live. I think in some ways it made the experience a bit more unpleasant and unnerving, but I’m really glad we stuck to this approach” the guitarist states. “I think we would have ended up doing much more standard guitar, bass and drums versions had we rehearsed the hell out of it prior to recording”.

An album that darkens as it progresses before emerging into the light with upbeat closing track Consolaton Prize, the disc hangs together beautifully. How long did it take to sequence the running order? “I don't remember it being a painful process so it can't have been that long”, bassist Simon Drowner states. “Picking the singles felt a lot harder this time, because what even is a single in 2025? What’s a focus track? What will they play on radio? And what song do we think our fans will like? I really just wanted people to hear the album in full, in sequence”.

A band who have always handled their own artwork, the cover of No Hero, a torn up and re-assembled photo of Jo on a landline telephone in front of a leaded window is one of their most intriguing to date. “I noticed there were quite a few themes of religion, masculinity and isolation in the lyrics and so I wanted to do something referencing The Annunciation by Richard Hamilton which is one of my favourite artworks” the singer explains. “I found this wonderfully bleak / curiously calm room in a local arts space, bought an old corded phone off eBay and just took approximately 9,286289 photos of myself in the room on the phone as the light faded gradually one evening. To give it a more arcane and textural feel I then printed it out and tore it up various ways, then reassembled it. There were a number of different versions but the simple quadrant image is the best and forms a cross, obviously”.

No Hero's curtain raising cut Adah with its religious themed lyrics and feeling of impending apocalypse, “Evil all its sin is still alive / Manene menenam, amen / Sugar don't, no drag us / Drawn onward” makes for a dramatic opening statement. “Adah (also sometimes Ada) is the name of a character in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible” Jo says of the track's inspiration. “She is a mute who is obsessed with wordplay and in particular palindromes and being from a very religious family a lot of her sections of the story involve her making up palindromic versions of hymns or prayers which comprise the lyrics to the song”.

On the subject of lyrics, have any writers inspired songs on the LP? “Other than Barbara Kingsolver I don’t think there are any in particular” Jo says. “I wanted the lyrics to be quite unconstructed and intuitive on this album, so it’s all a mishmash of the deepest recesses of my brain. I have been going through a real Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky) phase over the last couple of years though so maybe some of his slightly psychedelic, paranoid wonder-at-the-world tone has come through via osmosis – who knows!”

Possibly the album’s summit, intense new single 7 builds from Rob’s refracted guitar motifs and barrels into a roaring chorus that has quickly become a live favourite. The hookline, “Oh Shenandoah / I long to hear you / Away, you rolling river”, calls back to early landmark, 2015 single HappeningAnd Shenandoah is a high-rise dusted grey”. “The chorus of 7 is essentially lifted wholesale from the old American folk song Oh Shenandoah”, the singer says. “My mother and I used to sing it together when we lived in Maryland when I was a child and I’ve always liked its tune. It’s a popular song in that area as the Shenandoah River is mostly in nearby Virginia. In Happening I was just referencing the area in my own memory really - they are both songs about a kind of misremembered America I suppose so quite similar in many ways!”

The claustrophobic, trip-hop-esque Underwater based around a programmed rhythm track represents the biggest coup for the band to successfully pull off live. “Rob and I actually came up with it late one night” Jo explains of the song’s genesis. “It’s just a simple drum loop using the presets on the Volca Sample put through a bunch of effects and beefed up a bit. We wanted to do something a bit Geogaddi-ish (Boards Of Canada) with a sort of squeezing in and out beat that felt like it was breathing or stumbling or something”.



Given the new approaches to writing and recording, how easy – or difficult – has it been transferring the new material to the stage? “It felt like a much bigger challenge than on previous albums” Simon replies. “Originally, we were going to incorporate more synths and stuff live, but in the end we’ve simplified the arrangements, and with the exception of Underwater, it’s all done on one guitar, bass and drums. Jo got a new effects pedal that can add harmony for songs like Unsympathetic and Rob is probably doing more ‘pedal dancing’ than ever before. Live is a different beast to the album anyway, and people have been very complimentary about how the new stuff sounds live”.

Standout moment, the gloomily majestic Silent showcases more skilful stompbox work, where Simon’s bassline sounds as though it burns up in an inferno at end. “The main bass sound in Silent uses a Boss OC-2 plus some chorus and reverb. The low octave makes everything sound quite doomy – or ‘lugubrious’ in music reviewer speak!” Simon states. “For the bit at the end, Rob was on the floor messing around with an EHX ring modulation pedal while I played. I think the take on the record was the first take, and we instantly knew it sounded really cool. Predictably none of the following takes were as good”.

Wrapping up then, with 2025 still only a few weeks old, can you each name a favourite or most listened to album of 2024? “I listened to Enjoyable Listens’ Trapped In the Cage of A Hateful Bird a lot and then The Cure’s Songs of Lost World came out and it had to become my favourite album of the year” Caz says. “I love Mahashmashana by Father John Misty a lot, but I also really loved Charli XCX’s Brat, there’s two sides to a coin!" Jo states. "It’s just a fantastic pop album which is simultaneously artistically quite extreme and exhilaratingly fun”. “I didn't get into that many albums in 2024 for some reason" Simon answers. "My most listened to was probably Why Did I Choose This? by Oliver Marson which came out late 2023” . “Probably the new Father John Misty record for me but closely followed by the new Cure record” Rob replies.

No Hero is out now through Fierce Panda Records

Desperate Journalist Tour Dates:

Weds 5 Mar, Stowmarket, John Peel Centre (supporting Ash) (Sold Out)
Fri 14 Mar, Cologne, Germany Blue Shell
Sat 15 Mar, Geleen, Netherlands, De Reunie Geleen (Sold Out)
Thurs 3 Apr, Schorndorf, Germany, Club Manufaktur
Fri 4 April, Bielefeld, Germany, Movie
Sat 5 April, Dark Spring Festival, Lido, Berlin, Germany
Sun, 6 Apr, Dresden, Germany, Ostpol

Tickets here