Lights Out on the Reservation

Be Kind Cadaver (BKC) began as an experiment. Following the dissolution of their former punk band, singer/synthesist Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully and drummer/guitarist Leroy Brown soldiered on as a two-piece, without any ideas as to what kind of music they might make.

Aware that they wanted to experiment with the punk format, they began sharing a wild list of influences with one another. As well as The Jesus Lizard and Duster, Mauricio Kagel’s avant-classical performance pieces, the country and western hits of The Highwaymen and the art-pop of Yeasayer also played a pivotal role in creating their sound, as each new influence was used as a starting point to continually reimagine their core live set.

That process of review, renewal, and reinvention led to songs like the sprawling and majestic Lights Out on the Reservation. Over 12 and a half minutes, it ties mental fragility to the very essence of human plight, and the body and the spirit’s violent battle with both time and civility.

Humorous observations of the ageing process, ‘You say that you were thinner then, and it’s true, so was I / it’s easy to stay thin, when you don’t have to exercise,’ give way to sobering reflections on adult life, ‘these days we’re synchronising diaries just to try to find the time / to talk about our pension, and what happens when we die.’

Says Dann about the song, “Lights out on the Reservation is essentially about growing up wanting to change the world, and how it gets harder as you get older - the exhaustion of just trying to stay afloat mean the parts of the world that need changing end up remaining the same, to the great benefit of the few.”

Leroy adds about the creative process leading to the track’s evolution and final form, “The song has mutated over the last three years, having shifted through different genres, continuously chewed up, spat out, stretched and sculpted into the composition presented as the finale of our new EP.”