SKUNK ANANSIE (MARCH 26TH, 2025)

Nine years! Nine long years during which Skin and her band did not treat us to a new studio album! But there was no way Skunk Anansie was going to come back with just any album. New label, new producer, new way of working... ‘The Painful Truth’ puts an end to these long years of silence, evoking the strange times we live in... In this sense, this new album reflects the band's legendary political commitment, but also the more personal struggles...





Nine years after ‘Anarchytecture’, you are back with ‘The Painful Truth’. The title resonates like a brutal declaration. Was it important to remove the masks, including your own?


Deborah ‘Skin’ Dyer: Yes! We have left behind the image of an infallible band having a great time for a very long time...

Richard ‘Cass’ Lewis: ... and we deconstructed that image...

Skin: And that's kind of what this new album, ‘The Painful Truth,’ is about.


Skin, you said that if this album wasn't innovative, you just wouldn't have wanted to make it. Where did you draw the line between past and future?

Skin: The last album came out nine years ago, as you said. I hadn't even realised that. I thought it was five years ago...


In a way, ‘Anarchytecture’ has become irrelevant...




The pandemic didn't help...

Skin: The pandemic has fucked everything up! In a way, ‘Anarchytecture’ has become irrelevant, given that a decade later, we live in a completely different world. In the last three months, humans have completely transformed the world. So there's no comparison with the previous album!


In the meantime, you released a best of, ‘25live@25’. In this respect, you said you wanted to break with the best of spirit, turn your back on comfort. Is this album also a kind of break with the image that others have of you?

Skin: Absolutely, I hope so (Smile)! It's a bit like we deconstructed ourselves in order to reconstruct ourselves with the help of David Sitek from the band TV on the Radio. It was really important for me in particular to have someone who was involved in songwriting and who would know how to deconstruct those songs. It was important so that we could be seen as the band of the 1990s capable of doing something else, knowing that we don't necessarily have that hindsight.

Cass: That's the added value of the producer who takes what you do, records it...

Skin: … and makes it shine.

Cass: Exactly! We were looking for someone who was capable of taking what we had recorded and including their own elements... David contributed to that. We went from a four-member band to a five-person band. The important thing is creativity.

Skin: The fact is that David took our songs and made them better. That's exactly what we wanted! You can continue to follow your path and continue to do things the way you're used to doing them, but in the end you limit yourself...

Cass: After thirty years of having fun and writing together, we had pretty much done it all. We needed to do something different, and that's what we wanted.


We never said we wanted to reinvent ourselves or even change!


In a thirty-year career, you have experienced it all: the highs, the challenges, the break-ups. Does this album sound like an act of survival, or on the contrary like an assumed rebirth?

Skin: I wouldn't say rebirth...

Cass: I'd rather use an image related to photography. As time goes by, the photos of the people you take change. And this album is the last photo.

Skin: I hope no one will see this album as a rebirth or a reinvention or whatever... It's just our album of the moment. We never said we wanted to reinvent ourselves or even change! No, we just stretched out our hands, jumped up from the ground and landed in a cloud, a peaceful place... And we needed it because the process was very scary and far from easy.


For a long time, we didn't know what we were doing, but we kept going over and over again...




In fact, you went through a period of turbulence: a change of label, of management, personal doubts, distancing. How did you know that it was still the right time to create together?

Skin: You don't know, you just have to try! And you have to try. The only thing that was very clear to us when we started this album was that we were going to do very different things and that it was going to be very uncomfortable. That was the basic premise and indeed, it was very uncomfortable. For a long time, we didn't know what we were doing, but we kept going, over and over again...


In this respect, you retreated to a farm in Devon to start writing again. Was this radical choice, far from the studios, a life-saver for regaining a collective alchemy?

Skin: Yes! And it was also really fun...


Does that mean that you no longer had fun making the last albums?

Skin: We also had fun. We are very good friends but that didn't necessarily lead to the creation of extraordinary music. For this album, we made the choice to start writing far from London because there are too many distractions in this city where people go to bed late and get up too early...
In Devon, when you look out of the window, you come face to face with a sheep looking back at you... It's a far cry from the narcissistic view of the world where people are constantly seeking attention... Far from that noisy world where people are only interested in watching their phones and scrolling. When you're in Devon, you put your phone in your room and you don't see it again all day. It was relaxing: my brain stopped suffocating and I could concentrate on the songs and writing the lyrics. Simply being able to breathe again (Smile)!


We have to recognise that we are vulnerable above all else!




When you listen to the album, you feel as much anger as tenderness, as much urgency as lucidity. Were your vulnerabilities the main driving force behind this intensity?

Skin: I think that when you're dealing with political or social issues, you have to look at it from a personal perspective and ask yourself how it affects you personally... You write about your own experiences knowing that many people have had the same experience. If you try to write about how everyone thinks or feels, you easily fall into a generalised and flat slogan. It's something we've developed over a long time, as we've been writing for thirty years now. I think vulnerabilities are where everyone finds themselves because you are authentic: they are the best lyrics and the best vibrations you can offer. So of course we have to recognise that we are vulnerable above all else!


My struggle is reflected in the music and the songs!


Cass, you were already composing this album while undergoing chemotherapy that you didn't reveal to anyone. Looking back, do you think that this dual struggle - physical and musical - gave ‘The Painful Truth’ its raw, almost visceral strength?

Cass: It wasn't so hidden since the band members knew about it, but we hadn't actually revealed it to the public. For me, my struggle can be felt in the music and the songs: it was in the air! Even if it wasn't done consciously, it was in the air! I recognise myself in a lot of the lyrics: I feel like they're about my life!

Skin: You have to face it with the thought that you could lose a limb: fuck, it's heavy! It's really dark even if of course one day it will all come to an end (Smile)...

Cass: It was wonderful because this album is part of my recovery. As soon as I came back to the band, I felt this joy and sunlight inside me again.

Skin: And remember Cass, you were supposed to come to Los Angeles to record...

Cass: Stop going on about that (Laughs)!

Skin: But we were talking about the band! We could have taken someone else but no, Cass had to be on this album!


Our decision to work with [David Sitek] is an important part of rejuvenating and analysing our sound.


Tracks like ‘Animal’, with its almost industrial feel, or ‘Shoulda Been You’, with its unexpected groove, show that you have explored new sound territories. What part did David Sitek, whom we mentioned earlier, play in this process: revealing, complicit or simply a trailblazer?

Cass: He's the key person!

Skin: Definitely! I love working with Andy Wallace and I feel that Dave Sitek is on the same level but in a totally different way. I think it's important to work with someone who is on our level... All David did was to sit in the studio and make music: that's all he did! David is a fantastic artist in a nutshell. He treats his art by writing again and again. We wanted a producer who would dig into our sound and not just record it. Our decision to work with him is an important part of rejuvenating and analysing our sound.


The algorithm should not dominate the artist!




The track ‘An Artist Is An Artist’ was received as a manifesto: edgy, ironic, lucid. Was it a way of redefining yourselves in the face of an industry that recycles more than it discovers?

Cass: The answer is in your question (Laughs)!

Skin: ‘An Artist Is An Artist’ is about the fact that an artist has followers, but if they're not careful, they can follow their followers themselves, and that's how you start making bad music. A lot of artists and bands are now more concerned with getting more followers and forgetting who they really are. I post every three or four days, I post a few stories that are followed by 5,000 followers, but they are interested and follow my art. I'm not trying to define myself in some algorithm by talking about whatever bullshit I want. Social media is crazy! Anyway, if I have to do something, I'll do it my way and when I want to, and I won't submit to the pressure of social media because I'm an artist! I know I may sound arrogant or obsessed about it, but loads of people give me advice on how to grow my Instagram account, but I couldn't care less!

Cass: That's the problem. The algorithm shouldn't dominate the artist!

Skin: Exactly: an algorithm that tells you what content to post, when to post it... But I don't care, the only thing I care about is that social networks are another way to promote my art, but it shouldn't tell me what to do!


Similarly, as we said, this new album, ‘The Painful Truth’ is being released on a new label, with a new team. Is this a way of regaining lost freedom, of finally taking back the reins after so many years?

Skin: We've always been in control. On the other hand, it's just that this is the right team for this album. It wouldn't have been the same if we'd continued with the same team.


We're going through very strange times politically, but we're not there by accident...




Despite its heavy themes, the album has something deeply soothing about it. Has this record done you good, as much as it has done those who are listening to it today?

Skin: I hope so. I hope that when people listen to ‘The Painful Truth’, they will ask themselves what their painful truth is... We are indeed going through very strange times politically, but we have not arrived at this point by accident... In these circumstances, what are our painful truths? We all have a share of the responsibility and that is the truth that hurts... I hope that people will use this feeling to stimulate their actions, that they will speak out for the good of our society. It's the only thing we can do because the world is deeply divided...


The final track, ‘Meltdown’, is overwhelmingly sombre. The music fades away little by little to leave Skin alone with her voice, almost naked. Was it a way of gently closing this chapter, or of opening a new one in silence?

Skin: It's indeed the perfect track to close the album. It's one of those tracks where we could have added some groove and it would have changed it, but in the end, the track sounds really good as it is, bearing in mind that the lyrics are very important. We want people to recognise that there is a breakdown, that it is painful, but that there is still hope...


It's a nice conclusion: there is still hope!

Skin: Of course there is hope! I study history, I read a lot about it and you realise that empires are created, grow, prosper and then die... And all this is favoured by political organisations, especially when people turn to extremes. But it all depends on us realising that the direction we are taking is wrong and bringing down these extremist powers.
It always happens the same way. There are always painful moments to go through, but to avoid having to go through another five years of all these deaths, all these horrible things... let's prevent these people from getting the upper hand!





Thank you very much!

Skin: (In French) ‘Merci’

Cass: Thank you!


And thank you to Calgepo for his contribution and Stephan Birlouez for the pictures...