You may have seen Manchester’s Empty Page come across your social media feed recently, particularly if you seek music that caustically and poignantly covers the major stresses and indignities of modern life. The Empty Page are getting more and more exposure thanks (in part) perhaps to an increased appetite for their brand of punk which they themselves describe as “anxious songs for the end of the world”. So, it seems like a great time for Punk Rock Philosophy to pin down frontwoman Kel for a chat about being a woman in the punk scene, the pressure for bands to become content creators, and what happens when famous rock icons take a liking to your message…
The End is Nigh
It’s undoubtedly a good time for ‘end of the world vibe’ songs as the world does seem to have that ‘hanging by a thread’ feel that inspires anxiety, confusion and a desire to hide under the duvet. And for those behind the lyrics to the soundtrack of our dystopia, responding to societal ills can be a mixture of pain and catharsis. Like many songwriters, Kel starts with just getting some thoughts and feelings out of her head and onto paper and the lucky ones become the basis of The Empty Page songs:
“I have always done it- always written stuff down…and most of our lyrics come from my daily writing. Most of the time, I am just sifting through thousands of words that I constantly write. My brain takes on a lot of the worlds worries, and I get very upset and intense about issues. So a good way for me to process it, is to write it down. I have always written what I guess are political or social ‘human condition’ lyrics and I think now, people really want that. Occasionally I will write personal relationship stuff but most of the time it is stuff that made me angry!”
And there’s plenty to be angry about, and that’s reflected in the sheer range of topics that The Empty Page songs cover, from capitalist alienation and political corruption to anxiety and existential crises. There are also a lot of songs exploring body image, violence against women, sexism and misogyny- all topics that may primarily speak to the female listener but their appeal should (and does) go beyond that audience. Kel has sometimes found herself torn in this regard, in a way that a male songwriter probably doesn’t have to grapple with. On one hand, Kel has previously been wanting to avoid being pigeonholed as a musician who only sings about topics related to the female experience…whilst on the other hand, not actively censoring herself from documenting experiencing the modern world as a woman:
“I’ve been in bands for nearly 30 years and it has been difficult to be taken seriously as a woman a lot of the time. You are considered to be a novelty or there might be an onus on what you look like instead of your music. You get categorised within an already minute subcategory. I’ve had lots of conflict about writing- I didn’t want to write songs that only women would relate to as I felt like I was perpetuating putting myself in a category and also felt like I was excluding other people from enjoying the songs. But then with this band, we released our first single ‘Deeply Unlovable’ which was about feelings of self-loathing as a woman and feeling disgusted with myself. And a lot of women really resonated with it and I was pleased about that.
All my life I have listened to songs written by men and about things that affect them. I don’t want us to be just labelled a band specifically writing feminist music, because there are so many different things I am thinking about but at the same time, I wont exclude those topics”.
And if there is one label or subgenre that is commonly applied to punk bands making any kind of feminist sentiment in their music, it is riot grrrl. And this perhaps speaks to the need of categorising punk bands comprising of women by that very identifier, whether they are actually part of that tradition or not. The Empty Page take their inspiration from a wide spectrum of musical influences and are commonly compared to the fuzzier, grungier end of the alt spectrum with bands like Pixies, Fugazi or Sonic Youth frequently mentioned in coverage of their music. But the pesky riot grrrl references still seep in…
“I have seen a lot of people calling us riot grrrl… it is part of my musical history but just because I am an angry woman with a guitar doesn’t mean I am riot grrrl! If you are Thom Yorke, you can just be an artist. If you are metal, or punk, or emo you can just be that but if you are a woman, the genre has to have the word ‘girl’ in it which winds me up.
I used to be really annoyed at being categorised as a woman in a band and I would avoid playing on all women bills because I felt I was being put on the kids table…it didn’t feel respectful. And you had the added thing of having to be careful about who was putting on the show and why. But I have softened on that now, there are lots of people doing it for the right reasons and you have to push back on the lack of equal representation on stage and that does mean putting on bills with all women. It is about redressing the balance”.
Many years playing in bands and being ensconced in the punk scene has given Kel a good insight into the challenges of keeping such a scene alive. The cost of living crisis- alongside venue closures and audiences consuming music primarily online- have all taken a toll on the live music landscape and this has implications for bands and fans alike. The Empty Page are hometown heroes- frequently selling out their Manchester shows and fare pretty well in London too. But bands and venues are open about the difficulty of getting boots-in-pits for gigs and it seems to be a frequent thing to see shows cancelled due to low advance ticket sales. Venues and promoters are often unwilling to roll the dice to see if punters arrive on the night. With a knock-on effect of restricting the amount of shows bands will take a punt on, artists are unable to spread out to the provincial towns and smaller enclaves peppered between the usual big city suspects such as Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol etc. Arguably, exactly the sort of places that would benefit from thriving, punk shows! Kel wishes this wasn’t the case and thinks we need to be less prescriptive in judging worthwhile events and let the scene rally round organically. If you book them, they will come!
“It annoys me when gigs are cancelled due to low ticket sales, but a lot of people are reluctant to commit to stuff in advance in case something goes wrong or their plans change etc. So, if it is a smaller gig then people might wait until the day, that’s something I used to do! So, you are missing out on a whole possible audience if you completely rely on pre-sales for smaller bands. And it is really disheartening for the bands…the logistics that go into a tour (especially when you have a day job to plan around) only for gigs to be cancelled last minute is really not helpful.
Promoters need to look at their whole schedule and take a bit of a risk because people are now buying things last minute so can’t they adjust? Bands used to tour and do like, 25 shows all over the place, hitting everywhere… Now, it’s like Manchester OR Liverpool, maybe one Scotland show. It’s 8-10 shows rather than 20, so the Lincolns and Stokes and Reading- all those in between-y towns- they are losing venues and missing out on bands coming there. And bands miss out on those fans”.
This is impacted by the shift in how we measure a band’s popularity or relative success. It is now common to focus on social media followers and streaming metrics as evidence of how ‘well’ a band is doing, which means the pressure to ‘perform’ isn’t just about being on stage. Now it means foraying into ‘influencer’ territory- curating reels, Tik Tok videos and Instagram polls, whether they particularly want to or not. This is something The Empty Page have been open about addressing, using their platform to make content that brings in new potential fans whilst acknowledging that it sucks they have to do that in the first place. And as Kel points out, listener counts and all that jazz are not even a reliable way to track how a band is resonating or building an engaged group of fans:
“I hate the idea of monthly listener counts being reliable, because a lot of that is passive listeners anyway. I know bands that regularly sell out 4000 capacity venues but you would look at their online stats and you wouldn’t think they were doing anything! But they have a real-life audience that buy their vinyl and go to gigs, and that seems to exist outside of the other ‘online’ system… I worry that there will be a generation who will miss out if there aren’t chances to see bands in person. In the grassroots scene, I do not see that many younger people, those ‘all ages’ shows seem to have died out. Now there is a lot of onus on artists to bring the crowd, but we need to be playing to a couple of hundred people who regularly go to a night because they like the venue or they know the promoter always puts on reliably good bands. Build a thriving scene that way”.
The Empty Page are two full length albums ( ‘Unfolding’ from 2016 and 2024’s ‘Imploding’) and multiple singles into their career, having spent 10 years writing, recording and touring. The band consists of Giz (guitar), Steve (on drums) and Kel on bass and vocals, the trio coming together to make music for the end times. It’s brash, righteous, defiant and spiralling lyrics set to fuzzy, grungy riffs that channel rage, self-doubt, resignation, revolution or all of the above at once. The band have been toiling in the industry for many years doing everything themselves- “we do not have industry muscle behind us, we release out records on our own label, no manager or agent” – and have been on the giving end of the social media gods recently with the algorithm deciding to push their vital punk music right to the people who need it- the angry, the seething and….the rock goddesses? The band’s engrossing anthem ‘A Feminine Ending’ challenges the oppressive social structures that make seeking male approval the primary goal for women and quite rightly, it is gathering a lot of new fans for the band. Including a certain Hole frontwoman who shared the track to her stories:
“Some new people have found us via Courtney Love- it has given us kudos, and been huge for us to get a stamp of approval from someone like that! Somehow we tapped into a side of the algorithm where we were getting across to women who were into punk and alternative music and that is how we wormed our way onto her feed.
I’ve been doing this a long time and finally there is a certain appetite for it, we’re certainly not jumping on a bandwagon. This has not been an overnight thing! For whatever reason, at the moment we seem to be tapping into a certain listener that I want to reach. It’s not about fame or success for me it is about connecting with other humans and feeling like you are putting something out there that is meaningful and helpful. I get a lot of people telling me that it feels like I am inside their head. I think about how much other people’s music has saved my life, and so thinking about my music doing that for someone else is mind blowing.”
If you are in need of intense, raw and unflinching punk music to get you through our current theatre of the grotesque and absurd then check out the Empty Page on social media and on their Bandcamp. All links you need are HERE.
Kel, Giz and Steve have a few shows scheduled throughout the Summer with some UK tour dates to be announced next week- check out their website to stay up to date with their tour plans and get your tickets!
