THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Falmouth-formed Moreish Idols have carved out a unique position for themselves in the burgeoning London scene.
Whereas their first release showcased a restless, jerky, jagged and rhythmically centred sound that bore the influence of energetic post-punk, their second EP showcased an entirely different side to the band. This evolution saw the group stitch together a looser constellation of ideas, combining swooning tremolo guitars, prickly melodic riddles, erudite saxophone improvs and flexible rhythms, sounding like Watery, Domestic-era Pavement one second and the bucolic Canterbury scene the next, but always, always like Moreish Idols most of all.
Broadly speaking, the main themes running across their debut album centre around existentialism, memory, and illness. All In The Game considers how we understand our limited time on Earth: “Time being spent, time being wasted, time getting away from you,” explains bassist Caspar Swindells, “but being able to realise that time is what you make of it.” Moreish Idols is completed by singer-guitarists Tom Kellett and Jude Lilley, drummer Sol Lamey and saxophonist Dylan Humphreys. Talent-spotted by Dan Carey, their jerky, agitated debut EP Float (2022) and more expansive, yearning followup Locked Eyes And Collide (2023) were acclaimed by tastemakers.
All In The Game is filled with Carey’s production ideas, inspired by the concept of time. For the title track, Carey asked Humphreys to play the same sax part at different tempos, recording onto tape which was moving at different speeds. He also suggested splitting one of the demo tracks in half, with the first half played as the opening Ambergrin, and the second as the slower, less saturated outro Time’s Wasting: designed to sound like a memory of the former. A nod to their debut EP Float — which can be played on a continuous loop — the return of the track in this more ethereal, ghostly form captures how ideas, stories and observations are changed by the process of remembering.
One important recording decision was to have Kellett and Lilley sing almost all the vocals in unison. “Sometimes it sounds more like Jude, sometimes more like me,” Kellett says, claiming “I think it depends on what you’re listening to it on, and who’s listening.” Lilley claims it led to a wider change in the band’s chemistry: “It wasn’t just one voice backed by the music, it was all five of us working together — it removed all the ego from the band.” This idea of ego-death has a conceptual weight in the album, particularly in recent single Pale Blue Dot. Titled after a 1990 photo of Earth taken from space, Kellett claims the song raises its own questions about perspective: “How do you see yourself, and the things you’re doing?”
For the most part though, All In The Game’s existentialist questions revolve around more personal material. The fragmented story in Railway, sung from the perspective of a character determined seek her own path, was inspired by Lilley’s sister leaving home when he was young. The title track deals with a period in which Kellett’s father was having health issues: “How long does the wire stretch out?” he sings alongside Lilley, over a yearning, repeating arrangement of saxophone and guitar arpeggios. Slouch deals with Lilley’s diagnosis with Ankylosing Spondylitis: A form of arthritis that affects his spine and pelvis. “The song’s celebrating how much the NHS sorted me out in some regards,” says Lilley, who is now able to manage his symptoms with medication. “It was a reflection on never having problems with my health, and how – when you are finally rolled that dice — it’s just about adjusting to it and turning it into a bit of a superpower.” For Lilley, the album is largely about “laughing in the face of despair — trying to find entertainment and solace in quite dark things that have happened to us, or just happen to everybody.”
This is the sort of resolution All In The Game always seems to be reaching towards: for all its heavy subject matter and probing questions about human fragility, the conclusions it reaches about life are uplifting, hopeful and affirming.”
