Late Stay Ultra Girls Release New Single ‘Derek Is A Reasonable Man’
After a decade spent immersed in Bristol’s rich and unruly musical landscape, multi-instrumentalist Tim Burden returns as Late Stay Ultra Girls with new single ‘Derek Is A Reasonable Man’ (4th September).
A darkly playful collision of ska rhythms, post-punk tension, dark humour, and leftfield alternative rock, the new single finds Burden further developing the deliberately unpredictable sound that has become synonymous with Late Stay Ultra Girls. Produced by the acclaimed Stew Jackson (Massive Attack), ‘Derek Is A Reasonable Man’ brings Barrel-house piano, dub-leaning grooves, twisted guitar hooks and ugly, abrasive synths collide to create something simultaneously swaggering, murky, unsettling, and yet somehow vibrant and colourful.
At the centre of the song is Derek, a real-life pub landlord from Burden’s hometown and, in his own words, “a reasonable man.”
Burden explains: “Derek Is A Reasonable Man is about a horrible pub, which I loved. It was the one place in my hometown that stayed open past 11 when I was in my early 20s. Get there before 11 and you could stay until 3. Get there too late and the landlord Derek sent you back off into the night. At 3 he would shoo people out with a deep Somerset ‘time to go’. He was a reasonable man.
Pubs like that tend to have a pretty well stocked roster of colourful characters. I wanted to write a song that got across that vibe. Most people will have experienced it, there’s a very specific, very British charm, or perhaps the opposite of charm, about the flavour of weird and difficult people you find in those pubs. The song depicts it as a bit of a hellscape, various goblins chewing your ear off or being threatening or minging in different ways. Tom Waits is one of my all time favourite artists and lyrically I wanted to try and do a certain Waits-y thing of describing this roster of freaks in a dive bar and conveying the vibe at the same time with the music. I really love it.
Musically it’s quite a bit darker and broodier than my other two releases. The piano intro is an interpolation of clair de lune which I transposed into a different key and then janked the rhythm about. There’s a bit of a dub influence in there I think with the bass and piano groove. With the guitar hook I was trying to get as close as I could to pizzicato strings using guitars. That laid back vibe gave us loads of space to then chuck god awful sounding synths and disgusting wailing guitar solos over it to ramp it up.”
The sense of place, and of the strange, uncomfortable characters that inhabit it, is central to ‘Derek Is A Reasonable Man’. Rather than romanticising the pub, Burden turns it into a surreal British hellscape populated by argumentative strangers, grotesques and late-night goblins, capturing the peculiar social ecosystem of the traditional pub after dark.
Sonically, the track continues Late Stay Ultra Girls’ fascination with songs that refuse to sit comfortably in one genre. The laid-back groove provides the foundation, before warped synths, wailing guitar and increasingly unruly textures push the track somewhere altogether more chaotic. The result is loose-limbed, darkly funny and deliberately wonky, music that sounds like it could fall apart at any moment, but never quite does.
Late Stay Ultra Girls is the solo project of Tim Burden, a multi-instrumentalist whose career has taken him through an unusually broad cross-section of Bristol’s independent music scene.
His previous work has ranged from the alternative rock of The Hideaways, with whom he performed at Glastonbury Festival, to the country-inflected work of Billy Driscoll and Taynee Lord, and the high-camp glamour of Doreen Doreen.
Burden is also a touring member of Desperately Seeking Suki, whose music has received airplay from BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 Music.
His previous projects have also seen him perform at major independent music festivals in the UK and internationally, including New Colossus Festival in New York and Dot To Dot Festival, sharing bills with artists including The Orielles, Life, A Place To Bury Strangers, Stealing Sheep, Water From Your Eyes, Wyldest, Talk Show, Squid, Viagra Boys, Do Nothing, Sports Team, Girl Band and Getdown Services.
With Late Stay Ultra Girls, Burden has stepped away from the collaborative and sideman roles that have defined much of his career to create something distinctly his own, a project built around restless songwriting, dark humour and a willingness to let songs veer wildly off-centre.
Early releases have already attracted attention from Atwood Magazine, Earmilk, It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine and Notion, alongside airplay and support from Amazing Radio UK & US.
Feature Image Photo Credit: Tim Burden
Late Stay Ultra Girls latest single ‘Derek Is A Reasonable Man’ is out now.
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