Skint & Demoralised

Skint & Demoralised

Skint & Demoralised are a lyric-led alternative indie pop band from Wakefield and Sheffield, active from 2007 to 2013. The group forms via MySpace in May 2007, when a producer contacts an unknown performance poet and the project begins with an unusually improvised line-up and route into the music industry.

Formation and line-up

The band consists of frontman and lyricist Matt Abbott, who comes from Wakefield, and Sheffield-based songwriter and producer MiNI dOG. Abbott is completing his A-levels when the project starts and has been performing short spoken-word sets between other local bands in West Yorkshire. Before the band’s breakthrough, he is also working in a call centre.

Early attention and Mercury Records period

Skint & Demoralised build early momentum through demos that receive 10,000 free downloads. They are named number 3 in Steve Lamacq’s Top 100 New Bands of 2007 on Radio 1, and sign to Mercury Records in March 2008. MiNI dOG proposes that they record with The Dap-Kings, and they travel to New York to begin work on the debut album with the musicians who have recently recorded on Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. The Love, And Other Catastrophes sessions are completed at RAK Studios in London.

Singles, tours and festival appearances

The debut 7-inch The Thrill of Thirty Seconds sells out in advance, and Colin Murray names it Record of the Week. A feature by Dan Cairns in the Sunday Times Culture highlights the band’s potential. They tour the UK with support from This Song Is Definitely Not About You in February 2009, and Red Lipstick becomes a prominent track on local and larger festival stages. The song spends one week at number 100 in the charts and is B-listed by Radio 1, 6Music and Absolute Radio. The band also plays a well-received lunchtime set at Leeds Festival on the Festival Republic stage.

Split, return and later releases

By spring 2010 the band is dropped, and Matt Abbott returns to work as a Christmas temp at his local HMV. Later that year, a spoken-word and stand-up performance by Abbott on the Alternative Stage at Leeds Festival points to a possible continuation of the project. Over the following months, an album is written and recorded in MiNI dOG’s home studio. This Sporting Life is completed before Christmas, and the band signs to Heist Or Hit Records. Abbott then tours with a live band of friends from Wakefield, playing regularly through spring and summer 2011. A two-CD package of both albums appears in August after The Lonely Hearts of England is aired on 6Music, Radio 2 and Amazing Radio. In October the band tours the UK with dates alongside The Crookes, Art Brut and John Cooper Clarke.

Final album

The band’s third album, The Bit Between The Teeth, is released through Heist Or Hit Records in 2013, preceded by the single Breakfast at Sylvia’s.