Kid Bookie - ‘Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead’ review
Kid Bookie
Kid Bookie is energy personified. They’ve been grabbing headlines and smashing venues for a while now, but the biggest question is what was to come of their next big release after dropping Cheaper Than Therapy in 2021 and spending three consecutive years being nominated in various “Best X Act” categories. We have an answer, Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead dropped on 13 September via Marshall Records.
‘AI (Save Yourself)’ is by far the most familiar of Kid Bookie’s recent catalogue, though it has a marginally longer intro and outro on the album to beef up the production and effect. Having dropped late last year ‘AI’ didn’t have much left to prove on the album, but it did buckets in preparing people for the bombshell that was to come. This is personally exactly what comes to mind with a Bookie track as it’s heavy, works excellently live, and oscillates between melodic vocals, screams, and some dense rapped verses (give us one other song this hard that also references doner meat). Spoiler, this is a personal favourite. The linking element in a lot of Bookie’s music is thoughtfulness, which is why the stark difference in sound between ‘AI’ and ‘Purgatory’ is both extremely and barely surprising. The intensity dissipates with ‘Purgatory’, and makes way for a melancholic, emotional acoustic track. Bookie’s vocals are perfect for this type of track, and in terms of range, isn’t showing us anything “new” in his skillset, but rather a new thing he can do with it.
‘Nothing To Believe In’ feels like a convergence of the opening two tracks. Again, excellent vocals from Bookie lead the charge, but with a bit more pace to them and veering more into that rapped style. ‘Nothing To Believe In’ feels like a track to expect big things from, as it has a sound that would very much appeal to mainstream listeners, whilst still being an uncompromising Kid Bookie type of track. Everything from the opening three songs feels poignant and vulnerable but in different ways, whilst also feeling like a direct “fuck you” to something or someone with each track. In addition to intros and outros for certain tracks, ‘Interlude 1’ also bridges the gap in sound. The naming of this as an ‘Interlude’ doesn’t quite do it justice as it has some very intriguing sound for a less than two-minute song on the record, with one scream in the middle of it all being an incredibly harsh vocal.
‘Scars’ was the first taste of Kid Bookie in 2024 fans got back in April (it also has a new intro). This is the first one on the album that feels like it overtly focuses on being heavy, leaning much more into grungy, in-your-face songwriting styles with a heavily distorted bassline throughout. You can quite easily imagine being nose-to-nose with Bookie with the way he spits words out in this track. Also, the breakdown at the end of the song is excellent. ‘Self Control’ that follows again takes the foot off the gas a bit. This serves a bit like an interlude as well, without being called one. There’s a lot of experimentation in these shooter tracks that is very fun, such as the slightly “disembodied” sounding vocal track at first, which later plays into the harmonies of the song. Another one that is barely 90 seconds but has a lot to analyse and feels very well engineered. This blends almost seamlessly with ‘DOWN MY FRIEND’ which is a very short acoustic number, and despite how well they blend together, they feel like two distinctly different tracks that just work as a couplet.
As ‘Love Drunk’ started, there were genuine echoes of a ‘Stacy’s Mom’ style, pop-punk guitar. The best is that after ‘Bookie’s Dirtbag’ in 2022 that's not even a far-reaching comparison to make. This lends itself a bit too well to the pop-punk style, in the sense that Bookie could just pop up on any gig bill at this rate and have material for it. ‘Love Drunk’ is dead catchy and is a nice reprieve, and somehow despite the beefier sound of the rest of the album it doesn’t feel out of place. Get this on at emo-night in a club, stat.
The final single off the album, ‘Love Me When You’re Angry’, dropped back in June features a friend of ours Ziey Kizzy of Escape The Box. This is not the duo's first collaboration and the fact that such a proven formula means this sound actually outperformed ‘Scars’ on Spotify despite dropping after it. ‘Love Me’ plays at just the right tempo after a bit of a slower middle section to the album, the guitar on this is absolutely crushing, but plays against drumming as well as a tracked beat that means it's a perfect tune to head nod to at home or head bang to live. The addition of the second vocalist adds something a little different to the harmonies that have already been praised on the album. It also makes the playoff between harsh and clean vocals even more stark, especially during the extended outro they’ve added for the album version.
The album closes with ‘You Only See’, which does feel like a curtain dropping on the album. It’s light on instrumentals initially, apart from drums, and focuses on rapped vocals. That said, the chorus has a major air of reflection, but not in the same way as the other tracks to focus on cleans. It feels like the final piece of the even though when the track finished, our press release copy moved straight back to ‘AI’ and it felt like it didn’t miss a beat. That’s when you know they really did something.
Supported by critical acclaim and nominations for the MOBO Awards and Heavy Music Awards, Kid Bookie was already a force to be reckoned with. Everything on this album felt exciting, but also felt like it was made in the way it was, just because he could. When you consider the enigma that Bookie has made himself into, he exists almost on his own and Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead very much galvanises that. It shows a lot of growth but also leaves a lot of intrigue right down to the tiniest things. Best part is that Kid Bookie would probably tell you to fuck off for thinking that deep into it and go start his own mosh pit. That’s why you can’t take your eyes off this project.
Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead from Kid Bookie is out now via Marshall Records and available on all good streaming platforms.
