The clue is in the name. The debut release by Jonathan “Itch” Fox is titled, Manifesto Part 1: How To Fucking Rule At Life. Clearly, this is the work and the outlook of a man who does not wish for his life to be lived in the background. And when it comes to his music, Itch asks that listeners show a little consideration for their neighbours: Turn the stereo up so that they may hear it too.
Over four albums and more than seven years with The King Blues – by far the finest band London has produced since the storied days of the Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Itch acted as bandleader and majority shareholder. While this band may now be gone, the music they created rings out like a siren at a nuclear power plant. A full six months before one of the world’s most vibrant cities turned in on itself in a dance of fire and frustration in August 2011, Itch found himself occupying the role of prophet rather than songwriter when in “We’re Fucking Angry” he declared, “this is class war, this is class war, it’s what we wear our hoods and our masks for.” As the music writer Greil Marcus once observed, “To make true political music you have to say things that decent people don’t care to hear.” For his troubles, Itch and The King Blues found every reference to their group redacted from the website run by The Daily Mail, The UK’s priss-lipped, moral-arbiter in residence. For anyone who has the sense to leave a wide berth between their own eyes and the Mail’s stream of poison, this is the kind of honour equal to the sashes and gongs regularly handed out to the worthy and the good at Buckingham Palace.
Itch’s music is informed both by London in particular and Britain in general; places that understand him, and he them. This is also a man who understands that sometimes change is necessary. So it was that earlier this year the songwriter called time on The King Blues, and from the ashes of the group has emerged a coal-black bird of prey – alert, eyes trained on all that is rotten and humming a bevy of unmistakable and original tunes. Any fear listeners may have held that the demise of The King Blues would also equate to the mothballing of the group’s redoubtable political spirit is dispensed within the first minute of Itch’s first song as a solo artist. “London is burning, London is burning,” he sings on “London Is Burning,” adding “We don’t give a fuck; barricade the roads, the city’s run out of luck.” Luck, maybe; energy, never.
From the fiery pits of Camden Town to the Elephant & Castle underground, Itch is a London songwriter just as surely as The Kinks’ Ray Davis or The Clash’s Joe Strummer. “I know it’s only been six months or so since I last put out a record,” says Itch, (speaking of The King Blues posthumously released swansong, Long Live The Struggle), “which is no time at all, but for me it seems like ages. For the past couple of years I’ve been basically dividing my life between London and Los Angeles, but it’s been such a productive time. I’ve written so many songs. I’ve got enough for an album, a couple of EPs and about 20 b-sides! In terms of being creative, it’s been the most amazing experience.”
Six thousand miles and eight time zones from home, Itch was able to source contributions from musicians he had long admired as far back as the days when he lived in a squat in Clapham. At the top of this list was the name Tim Armstrong, bandleader of the rhythmically relentless punk band, Rancid. One of life’s most redoubtable truisms is that one should not seek to meet their heroes. Fortunately for Itch, Tim Armstrong was precisely the kind of man his invitee desired him to be. The two recorded the song “Bruises” (elevated by John Feldmann’s sprightly and colourful production) singing that these bruises are ”purple and blue, I got the scars to prove what I’ve been through.” Whatever these travails may be, their memory is set to music that sways with the casual, even nonchalant air of those who will never be bowed. This is confirmed as the two men tell their listener that they “refuse to be forgotten.”
Itch’s heavyweight collection of new solo songs will emerge throughout 2013, and will feature ingredients that include hip hop, punk, and dubstep. In the place of a band who had become over-burdened by their own creative template, there now stands a man who feels both emancipated and inspired. More than ever before, Itch is one in control of his surroundings. Bracketed by a lyrical finesse that is both flourishing and fearless, his first five song EP may be slight in length, but is merely the first course of a larger meal to come. The embarkation of Itch as a solo performer, unhindered by anything other than the limits of his own tireless imagination, is a development that prepares the stage for the arrival of one of Great Britain’s finest and most authentic songwriters.
