GEN AND THE DEGENERATES DEBUT ALBUM ‘ANTI-FUN PROPAGANDA’ OUT NOW

Following the release of ‘BIG HIT SINGLE,’ alt-punk collective GEN AND THE DEGENERATES today announce the release of their striking debut album, ‘ANTI-FUN PROPAGANDA’ set for release on 23 FEBRUARY 2024 via Marshall Records.

Accompanying the announcement comes the release of the riotous new single ‘Famous’. Fans can stream the single – HERE and pre-order limited edition vinyl bundles– HERE. The band will also hit the road with legendary Celtic punks, FLOGGING MOLLY, across America in 2024. A complete list of dates can be found below.

Ever since Genevieve Glynn-Reeves was a child, she had an overwhelming awareness of how difficult it is to be a human. There’s infinite possibility, after all, in this life for disaster, tragedy and misfortune. Switch on the news, and it’s all there in front of you – war, crime, climate change, economic upheaval, more than enough to make you think that to be alive is to struggle constantly.

What do you do when it feels like the world is crumbling around you? For Gen and the Degenerates, the answer is to have fun. “I don’t want to shy away from the darkness of being a human,” explains vocalist Gen (whose pronouns are she/they). “But by that merit, I don’t want to be fully consumed by it and forget to have fun and be silly and make light of it. I think it’s important to have these difficult conversations with a sense of lightness and humour.”

Through this lens, the band’s enthralling debut album ‘ANTI-FUN PROPAGANDA’ was born. A writhing mass of biting, off-kilter guitars, fuzzed-out driving basslines, and blown-out drums. The album carries all the grit and cross-pollination of hip-shaking desert rock with New York punk at a violent disco while retaining an undeniably British disposition.

Recorded and produced by the infamous ROSS ORTON (Arctic Monkeys, Amyl and the Sniffers, Drenge, Gang of Four), the album is a coming-of-age story seeing the band as both a tightly knit unit and as individuals, find out who they are, and what they stand for. Late nights and early mornings, sexuality, gender politics and mortality, all while surviving your twenties in a volatile and confusing world fuelled by turmoil.

“The vibe of the album is ‘…anybody else seeing this?’ jests Gen. “It covers some heavy subject matter, but my inability to write anything sincere means there’s always a sense of humour and absurdism throughout. We’d always struggled with our sound on record,” explains the vocalist, “but meeting and working with Ross, something just seemed to click into place. We make a lot of noise, and Ross was the first person to capture that and refine it.”

Speaking on their latest single ‘Famous’ Gen adds,

Sonically, their debut album ‘ANTI-FUN PROPAGANDA’ draws from New York punk and post-punk sounds – think Patti Smith, LCD Soundsystem and Sonic Youth. “The key with them all is that they can be obtuse and artsy or whatever, but they’re not afraid to just write a pop song,” guitarist Sean reasons. The record has its eyes open and its tongue sticking out, bursting with witty takes on the messiness of twenty-something life in a system stacked against you. There are songs about the absurdity of online discourse (‘That’s Enough Internet for One Day’), pretentious trend-chasing (‘Post-Cool’), the desire for a simple, stable domestic life (‘All Figured Out’) and refusing to subscribe to a social and political agenda that tries to restrict fun (‘Anti-Fun Propaganda’).

Meanwhile, ‘Girls’ celebrates the quirks girls have with a queer slant: “It started with frustration. You see it so much, men being like, ‘I hate it when girls do this, I hate it when girls do that’,” says Gen. “I think men are socialised to dislike women, and that’s such a funny concept considering they’re also supposed to fall in love with them and have families with them.”

The softly theatrical six-and-a-half minute closer ‘Jude’ brings the album to an emotional end, a tribute to Gen’s late aunt that reworks the famous opening line of The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’. “She didn’t like that song because people would always sing it to her at school every time she walked down a corridor,” they recall. “I wanted the first half to [consist of] remembering and talking to her, and the second half to be that point in grief where you can start to celebrate. That’s the last line – ‘I don’t know what happens when we die/But I’m glad that for a while we were alive at the same time’.”

With a debut like theirs, full of personality, witty observations, and frenetic riffs, it’s clear that now is Gen and the Degenerates’ time.

‘ANTI-FUN PROPAGANDA’ will be released on 23 FEBRUARY 2023 via Marshall Records—Pre-order limited edition vinyl bundles – HERE.

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Kids Wanna Dance

Girls! Ft. Uninvited

Anti-Fun Propaganda

That’s Enough Internet For Today

All Figured Out

Plan B (Interlude)

Post-Cool

Jude’s Song

16 Mashantucket CT, Foxwoods Resort Casino, The Great Cedar Showroom

17 Montclair NJ, The Wellmont Theate

18 Atlantic City, NJ, Sound Waves at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

20, Norfolk VA, The NorVa

21 Richmond VA, The National

23 Charles Town VA, Hollywood Casino Event Centre

24 Jim Thorpe NY, Penn’s Peak

25 Huntington, NY, The Paramount

27 Winston-Salem NC, The Ramkat

28 Chattanooga, TN, The Signal

1 Nashville IN, Brown County Music Centre

2 Madison, WI, The Sylvee

3 Green Bay WI, EPIC Event Center Green Bay

5 West Des Moines IA, Val Air Ballroom

6 Davenport IA, Capitol Theatre

8 Kansas City, MO, Uptown Theatre

9 Mulvane KS, Kansas Star Casino

10 Lincoln NE, Bourbon Theatre

12 Boulder CO, Boulder Theatre

Genevieve Glynn-Reeves (She/They) – Vocals / Sean Healand-Sloan (He/They)– Guitar / Jacob Jones (He/Him) – Guitar / Evan Reeves (He/Him) – Drums / Jay Humphreys (He/Him)– Bass

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