Gang of Four: Change is the only constant

If you’ve paid any attention to rock music, mainstream or alternative, in the last 36 years, Gang of Four has graced your eardrums. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ angular funk, Kurt Cobain’s biting sarcasm, Franz Ferdinand’s razor sharp guitar lines: Gang of Four did it all first. The legendary post-punk outfit exploded onto the fertile Leeds music scene of the late 1970s, and its influence has only expanded while the actual band has disintegrated to include only one original member.

Andy Gill faces an uphill battle. Following the departure of fellow founding member and singer Jon King, after releasing 2011’s album Content, Gill is tasked with keeping Gang of Four relevant. Inevitably, there have been cries of ‘sellout’ and ‘has-been’ among purists, but if anyone is up to redefining a band that has already defined so much, it’s Gill. His metallic, ear-piercing guitar riffs made Gang of Four’s music at once violent and danceable, acerbic and sweet. After replacing King with singer John Sterry and recruiting drummer Jonny Finnegan, Gill released What Happens Next, the first Gang of Four album with only one founder holding up the band’s legacy. “I had to reimagine the band from the ground up,” Gill says. “It was like doing our first record again.”

Despite being released this year, the songs hardly sound three decades removed from the band’s original output. “England’s in My Bones,” retains all of the hallmarks of Gang of Four’s aesthetic: The dance-floor bass, jagged guitars, and wry lyricism are all present, just coated with the sparkling sheen of modern production.

The record’s consistency is due to the fact that nearly all the music was written by Gill, a feat daunting to most, but he insists the process was painless. “It was not at all difficult,” he says. “In a way, it gave me the opportunity to really think hard about each song, each lyric, and put everything under the microscope.”

Despite backlash from fans, anyone who’s followed the group’s career trajectory should understand that What Happens Next is a distinctly Gang of Four move. Even though critics most often align themselves with Gang of Four’s first two releases, Entertainment! and Solid Gold, those albums represent a small portion of the group’s career. In the years following those two legendary releases, Gang of Four went through various lineup and stylistic alterations. Change has been the only true constant in the group’s lifetime. “Gang of Four is not a static thing,” Gill says. “There are some bands where you know exactly what you’re gonna get from their sound, but, for Gang of Four, every record sounds different.”

Politically, the world is an even more ideal place for a new Gang of Four record. Arguably the most crucial aspect of the band’s sound comes from its biting lyrical content. Lines like “Ideal love, a new purchase, a market of the senses / Dream of the perfect life / Economic circumstances, the body is good business” from the classic single “Natural’s Not in It” lambast the kind of consumer culture that is now inextricable from daily life.

Yet Gang of Four’s political context is often left out by bands who co-opt more crowd-pleasing elements. “It’s difficult for me to separate the musical language of Gang of Four from the lyrics or subject matter,” Gill says. “For me they’re interwoven.”

Now at a time when capitalism is at its height and music is treated as a brand more than an art form, Gill faces off with a more frightening world than the one he jabbed at in the late ’70s. He struggles to narrow his frustration to one example, but lands on women’s rights. “If you had told me in 1979 that 35 years later, women’s situations weren’t going to be improved much, I would be pretty shocked,” he says. “Surely the world would become a more progressive place.”

That shock undercuts the most glaring change on What Happens Next. The subtle wit that Gill and King perfected on Gang of Four’s first two albums has soured into a heavy-handed lament of society’s fate. On “Dying Rays,” guest singer Herbert Grönemeyer croons a raspy take on Gill’s resigned lyrics: “Control and power / Empires were built in our minds / But it will all go up in a blaze / Only dust in the dying rays.”

By reigniting a sound that many critics assumed dead, Gill has proven why Gang of Four is more relevant today than ever.