I mean, let’s be real. No review is ever objective.

Take listening to The Beatles for the first time. Either you’ve listened to other music or you’ve never listened to music before ever in your whole life.

If you have listened to any other music, ever, then, well, your opinion is going to be biased; “The Beatles sound pretty cool, but I wish they had more insane trombone solos like Redeemon do”.

On the other hand, if you’ve never listened to any music before, EVER, then just the very idea and experience of music is going to be incredible. Mind-blowing. Your review is then not just of the idea of listening to the Beatles, it’s of having your mind opened.

In many ways, this is both. Call Me Malcolm are one of ten thousand ska bands I love. I’m hopelessly, irretrievably biased towards their ridiculous genre in general, and to their glorious selves in specific. But, also, these guys impacted my awareness of mental health in a way that fifteen years of medical practice failed to. They opened my mind.

So my OCD won’t let me be
Or let me see through anxiety
They try to bury me so I dress for my turn
Maybe I’ll never learn

The thing is, I don’t think that Call Me Malcolm are the greatest band in the world. For pure musicality I’d probably rather see Guns N’ Roses at the peak of Appetite for Destruction touring, or BB King in a prison somewhere; but the music we love can’t be disconnected from the world that we live in.

Sing with me and we’ll tear the house down
Everything’s cool just enjoy the breakdown

It’s not just a thing that you put on and sing. If you’re shouting about “Paradise City” and pretending it’s not about people dying from heroin overdoses, you’re lying to yourself.

Music, at its very best, is the soundtrack to our lives. Real lives. Real people.

Call Me Malcolm provide that, probably better than anyone else in the world.

I’m so torn cause I can’t stitch up
The scars worn and the self-made cuts
You’re never fixed with a daily transmission
Never cured you’re only just a manic in remission
Well, here’s two more and it won’t come cheap
Here’s a little song to make you feel less incomplete
Just sing along with me

At this point, I have to admit, not only is this review not objective, its basically semi-autobiographical too. Indulgent, I know. A Lester Bangs-wannabe who is also a middle class doctor who doesn’t think Lou Reed is good. My apologies.

I first met Call Me Malcolm about eight years ago. It was at the much-loved, much-missed Old Town House venue in Warrington. There was immediately something different about them.

First of all, they were playing ska music. Which, if you’re reading this website, means you already know I have a blind spot for.

But secondly…? I think they were the first band I ever saw absolutely owning mental health. Owning that this life that we soundtrack to, that we need a soundtrack to, is difficult, and hard, and full of rocks in the road. What I saw, and have seen countless times, in countless venues and on countless hours of headphonage is something special. What CMM always do, in their plaintive yet playful playing, is they remind you that the real heart of good music, of a good soundtrack, isn’t just something that sits alongside your day.

Real music is a good friend who’s there with you, sharing your tears, sharing your celebrations, and cracking a joke when laughter’s all we’ve got left. And that’s what I’ve always found ska music does so well: it’s a sarcastic smile at a world that can seem so cruel, and a riotous acclamation of all the best bits. Call Me Malcolm, yes, they call out the badness, but then they link arms and throw a saxophone solo over the top of it, and shout about how life is worth living.

That it’s worth living together.

We talk it through, I tell you how I’ve been
My true self but without the skin
A suicide pact less the mortal sin
Just tell me I’m cracked and gimme the dopamine
I hit pause for the laughter, declare I’m a disaster
Connect the dots to create the lines
In time I’ll find a movement that’s all mine

Yeh, yeh Chris, but what’s the album actually like?

Look, it’s good, okay? REALLY good. Here’s the track I just included the lyrics to above:

Previous Call Me Malcolm releases have generally started with a quasi-sketch comedy interview or mock radio sketch, adding a little bit of levity in case people are hurt by some of the truths talked about later on. Funny enough, quickly over. It’s always struck me, just a little bit, like they’re being a bit too apologetic doing that. Like, you know, “Don’t worry! We’re not taking ourselves too seriously! This is only a silly ska album”.

Echoes & Ghosts is different. It bursts open with “Ready Aim Fire” a track that is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s both a focused raw burst of targeting that lets the listener know what’s coming, and a technical, skillful track with a real amount of punch. There’s a razor sharp rhythm department in the basement and, of course, brass parts to give up and go home for.

Yes, I think it’s readying us to aim fire at ourselves— but in a more productive way than a blinding whirlwind of self-hate. We need to get ready to constructively acknowledge that we’re not perfect, but we also need to turn the gun and point it onto our hate.

Counting the days until I break back down
I disappear cause I am no one now
Take my, take my reflection
Fill your lungs with self-deception
Burn my, burn my reflection
Bury yourself and learn your lesson

Yes, there’s voices in most of our heads saying we’re not good enough and that we’ll never amount to anything and that everyone hates us; the voices are lying, but it’s still true we hear them. We just need to embrace a different truth, a truth where there’s restoration and redemption.

Enough of all my defects, let’s talk about you
And my pedigree
Gimme the themes, and the narrative too
Until they’re just remedies
With a heart outpoured cause I played my mistakes
I’m beyond regret
I’m smart I’m sure, but I score my heartbreaks
And I’m not dead yet

When I first met Call Me Malcolm, I’d never had therapy. Then, after I met them, I had therapy and I found it completely rubbish, utterly unhelpful and worthless. But just like abstract songs on a record player, music is not the only thing you need to fix your life. Nor is therapy. Sometimes pills don’t work. But, as their song title says so well “Dead Men Take No Pills”. We can’t give up.

Call Me Malcolm are a band, and more than that, they are my friends. There’s Lucias, who I admire deeply, and am only very slightly scared of. Mark, who if this became a game of “Marry, Shag, Kill” would be walking down the aisle with me. No, I’m not going to say who the other two are (Winks at Lloyd, glares at Trev). There’s Chris, and occasionally Nathan, bringing the machine-gun counterpart to Trev’s grooves. And of course, Lewis, who I’ve STILL not met, and may just be a cruel joke the rest of the band is playing on me at this point.

They’re fellow journeyers on the road of life. You need those people. You need community. You need friends. You need to stay up laughing until five in the morning with people you love. Multiple songs on Echoes & Ghosts talk about stuff haunting you at two a.m. It’s a poetic inevitability that sometimes the stuff that heals you needs to happen at those times too.

Two a.m. and falling through the floor
I tune out a hundred miles away
What’s another couple hundred thousand more?
Too lost and a little far gone
A brittle self-worth from the life I’ve drawn
I’m home, I just have to hold on

Gimme peace and some tranquility and meaningful imagery

Eventually for me, therapy helped. It wasn’t everything—I’d be dead without Jesus—but therapy was one of many stepping stones towards betterness. For me, it was therapy with a close friend who’s a therapist. And it turned out that was the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle for me: I need my self-improvement wrapped up in friendship.

That idea, of finding our hope amongst our friends, it’s just all over this album. There’s no doubt that they are offering that, alongside whatever tootie, guitarey nonsense they happen to be peddling at the same time—they are saying “We are here, with you, in the darkness”.

Look, track three is called “Dead men take no pills”. Obviously, dead men take nothing. That option is gone to them. And yet, the pills aren’t perfect. Even suicide doesn’t cure our depression.

But friends?

Friends can show us the way. They can wait beside the path and point it out when we can’t seem to see it for ourselves.

Twenty five years of falling apart
But I died the day that I heard your heart
Once upon a time, I don’t know how this ends
I hate not knowing but I’m hooked on suspense
As I stare into the eyes of an endless youth
I will turn self-pity into harmonies for you.
I’m cracked, there’s beauty in that
But I’ll choke my echo to make something new

And if the whispers say you’re not enough
Take my hand, cause I still have the cuts

Lucias, Mark, Trev, Chris, Lewis, Lloyd, Nathan, and anyone else I’ve met in conjunction with your ridiculously unprofitable band. Thank you for your friendship, and thank you for your Echoes & Ghosts. It’s meant a lot to me.

PS. Oh yeh, the music’s great too. Favourite bits:

• Drums: Storming throughout, but absolutely got to give a nod to the tiny little touch on the metalwork at the end of the breakdown in Nobody knows anything and nobody learns much either.
• Bass: That walking all over the place in the verses of One cure to the head, two to the chest? I reckon you put Joe Dart to shame.
• Brass: Dead Men Take No Pills. Again and again.
• Guitar: The riffs and tone throughout Cheers and Self-Loathing are as crisp as fresh poppadums. Can’t say fairer than that.
• Vocals: I saw Hairspray at the theatre last week. The harmonies on “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness” were absolutely better.
• Lyrics: Probably, 154bpm. What a song. The cleverness of the lyrics throughout, the way they fit the rhythm, the nuance, the metaphors. Favourite line: “My true self but without the skin”

PPS. Lewis, I’m reliably informed we will be great friends when we do eventually meet and if you do, in fact, exist. Thank you for making Call Me Malcolm happen. Let’s tease Mark about how short he is.

PPPS. You can buy Echoes & Ghosts at all good indie record stores, or even better, grab it direct from the band on bandcamp and from CallMeMalcolmBand.com.

Check out Call Me Malcolm on facebook – and on tour right now, all over the country!