Start Listening To: Tommy Cossack & The Degenerators

Peckham garage punk Tommy Cossack talks inspirations, cartoon humour, and what ticks him off.

Unleashing a slew of sardonic, synth-bleached garage rock across the last few years, Tommy Cossack has beefed up his previously eggy lo-fi by recruiting backing band The Degenerators for a full-throated onslaught of hooky punk attack scoring Tommy’s lyrical spits of everyday anxiety and societal fatigue with greater velocity. Fresh off the release of debut album Agitator, we caught up with Tommy to explore the LP’s creation, inspirations, and the importance of irreverence.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

I'm Tommy Cossack from Tommy Cossack & The Degenerators. I've been living in London for over ten years but I'm originally from Portsmouth. The music I make has often been described as ‘eggpunk’ which, at a Bikini Kill concert the other day the band said was just a meme, so I guess we’re just a punk band.

What does the debut album Agitator represent to you in contrast to your prior EPs from 2021?

I guess because quite a lot of the songs are previously released and just done by me, there’s a kind of sonic journey of imagining going beyond a drum machine to analogue, an actual person playing the drums. Generally, just playing of instruments in a more directing to a Tascam

sense of things and trying to figure out, not how to emulate the Tascam sound, but how to make things fatter and better. And not need to sound so fucking lo-fi because the lo-fi element of a lot of stuff honestly just hides a lot of bad musicianship.

‘Agitator’ could have several meanings. What does that title convey for you?

This might sound really fucking pretentious, but it was written around COVID and a period where people were anti-vaxxing and stuff like that. All your older relatives on Facebook were really radicalised and to me, it just seemed like there were so many people in bad faith trying to cause these giant rifts which just seemed pointless to me, like agitating. Plus, people in music who are just being edgy for the sake of it.

How did CIVIC’s David Forcier come to mix the album?

We initially wanted Mikey Young to do it without realising David Forcier was also mixing and mastering and taking on a lot of Mikey's overflow. David was just perfect for the project. We just told him “can you make it sound like this CIVIC record?” and he was like “well, I mixed and mastered that so of course!”

The Degenerators are a melting pot of like-minded, London artists. Could you talk a little about the respective members and their acts, and how they add to the band?

We have over half of Beige Banquet in the band. We got Ian on drums from Beige Banquet, Danny, the bassist of Bege Banquet playing lead guitar, and then we have Tom, who plays bass when he usually plays guitar and does vocals. So we have this rhythm section from Beige Banquet that is already a super rhythmic band that knows how to lock in, which helps infinitely. Our synth player Josh isn't really in any bands but he used to play in a lot of punk bands growing up, always just being involved in music one way or another.

Natacha, who’s sadly left the band has Maripool going and the reason she's left is because Maripool’s really picking up. I used to play with her in that band, but I quit to focus on my project and now she's doing the same thing which is fairly respectable.

What inspires your songwriting?

It changes. It's usually some kind of annoyance or a kind of anger that I have. We got a song called ‘Slots’ which is about how a friend who lost quite a lot of stuff going on for him because of gambling, and a new one ‘Skulker’ which is more about my own kind of anxieties and stuff like that. I'd say it's a general disdain for life and introspectively looking at how I’m experiencing life maybe?

I would love to be able to know how to write more in metaphors and similes but honestly, I'm not that good with words so to speak, which is a prime example of me not being very good with words.

Your Bandcamp bio states that “Agitator comes as a full force blunt trauma to the head, with lead guitar riffs and synth lines acting as the cartoon birds circling above the cortex.” How important is cartoon humour to your work?

I don't like things to be too serious ever, even when it is serious. Laughter is a great escape for me, and that kind of childishness isn’t always intentional but it seems to be a default. I feel like if you can get a point across that is serious but without completely serious delivery things will always be more engaging.

Were there any creative principles or methods consciously deployed when recording the album with Ryan Tennant?

Ryan had this Tascam 388 reel-to-reel tape desk setup, which I think Ramones used as well, so there was a pretty cool piece of equipment that we knew we wanted to use, plus not gonna lie it was fucking cheap! We recorded both the guitars together using small practice amps mic'd up

which sounded really cool because Ryan has this old amp which is actually the first ever amp I had, a Yamaha THR10 that sounds bad but it's got this little distortion button which sounds better than fucking half the distortion pedals you'll buy.

A lot of labour went into the album cover. What's the story?

The album cover was done down the road from my flat, with Ryan at a pub called The Copper Tap and actually, we did it on another occasion at some coffee place which I forget the name of. I took some photos that people had previously taken of us and collaged them as a base in Photoshop, then we went and took a Bluetooth thermal receipt printer that had a cat face on it and printed it out on that and pieced it together with Pritt Stick on paper, scanned it using the iPhone notes app, then printed it out again. We were just drinking at the pub throughout the process, with a Prit Stick and a little cat printer and just looking like fucking weirdos, luckily there was no one there.

Are there any key albums or records, old or new, that you had in mind to inform ‘Agitator’?

All the Tommy Cossack stuff is very influenced by Jay Reatard because listening to Jay Retard and being a big fan of his I always look at how catchy all of his songs are. Useless Eaters were a really big thing for me in the kind of garagey sense, but I don't think we really sound

anything like them, I wish we did. Billiam’s a big inspiration for me as well, cause when I started he was the guy that first vouched for me as a musician outside of my friends, he actually helped me out with how to get the drums sounding on some of the old stuff and I just copied whatever synth he got.

Billiam’s a big thing for me too because of how I wanted to sound in a fun kind of way, but also a mix between hardcore and eggpunk that wasn't in any way hardcore but had a tiny element of it.

What’s next for the band?

We have some pretty exciting gigs coming up later in the year. After taking a bit of a break after the album it's time to get back on the horse with some new songs. We have one we’re currently playing live which I would argue is probably our best song. Hopefully some festivals, hopefully a Europe tour.