Though only a year young, UK pop punk newcomers Trash Boat have made little short of a flying start. The St Albans based quintet came bursting out of the blocks in July 2014 with their debut E.P, the aptly titled Look Alive. Boasting buoyant guitar licks and vocal melodies custom built for impregnation on the temporal lobe, Look Alive saw Trash Boat quickly capturing attention. A flurry of live activity followed, the band hitting the road to share stages alongside Me Vs. Hero, Light You Up, Roam, Homebound, Six Time Champion and Knuckle Puck.
Look Alive received rave reviews, its lead track Boneless earning the band a coveted spot on Rock Sound magazine’s covermount CD, and securing the band a worldwide deal with respected international label, Hopeless Records. Since securing a sought-after place on the label roster, alongside such well respected names as All Time Low, Neck Deep, Taking Back Sunday and New Found Glory, Trash Boat have been hard at work on the follow up to their debut and recently released their sophomore E.P Brainwork. Here vocalist Tobi describes the process and thoughts behind the creation of its artwork…
Artist: Jake Carruthers
We picked him because he had seen a bunch of stuff he had done for other bands and were really digging his style, we were interested to see what he would do with our brief and he smashed it to be honest!
Our original EP artwork featured that little ragged purple/blue guy so the brief we sent over to Jake was asking for not only the theme of reflection, but we also wanted to see someone emerging from him like he was shedding skin.
What the art is attempting to represent is growth from adversity, the Look Alive guy was on his knees and looking hopeless, with the Brainwork art we wanted him looking like he was picking himself up and moving forward, shedding his skin, reflecting on his issues and gaining some perspective (several puns in there I’ll leave it to you to find them).
The term ‘Brainwork was coined as even though a lot of the lyrics to Trash Boat’s song address physical issues, the biggest struggle is in our heads.
Read our review of Brainwork here.
