Public Body want to offer you fresh fruit on this Thursday morning (August 27), and you can chew it with or without your mouth wide open. The Brighton-based English post-punk band unleash their acerbic new single “Ask Me Later,” and it’s a call out to our mundane and miserable lives spent in the workplace. It hits even at a time when we’re all working from home.
Vocalist Seb Gilmore breaks down the daily monotony as the track’s spiked rhythm pogos off the edge of oblivion: “Morning meeting, weather update / Program shut down, let me out now.” And some lines bear repeating, like “Only 1% pay packet increase” and “How much do they pay you for that?”
Graphic designer and artist Emil Mniszko, who created the “Ask Me Later” artwork, added this to the song’s background and context: “Labour-oppressive wellness initiatives; mechanic lubricants. Half a decade of unprocessed bitterness, constricted by social norms as corporate structures. The Program fails through successive firmware updates while, in the background, slideshow graphics show that rage tends towards infinity. The face of a destabilized workforce in a society that secretes symbolic concessions as a defense reflex against meaningful change. Your positive attitude is keeping us all in line.”
Listen to “Ask Me Later” right now, tell the person on the other side of your cubicle wall all about it, and then get back to work.