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Jul 05, 2022 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Sedona May

Fans last heard from strident Scottish indie rock quartet Declan Welsh and The Decadent West last year with their latest EP, It’s Been a Year. Their previous EP was a fresh reintroduction to a quickly evolving band, featuring expanding instrumental palettes and new stylistic detours that brought the band further afield from their punk roots. Now the band are exploring further down the rabbit hole with their newly released EP, Impermanency, out everywhere now.

The opening title track sets off the proceedings with a bang, as Declan Welsh spits his jittery lyrics over top of a rollicking bassline and layers upon layers of guitar. The band then follows with the dense and danceable post punk of lead single “Aw The Time” and the swaggering, raw power chord stomp of “Slack Jaw.” Finally, the EP closes on what is at once its sweetest and most expansive track, “Whatever Forever.” Welsh’s crooned lyrics are full of syrupy confessions, while the accompanying instrumental strikes a balance between emotive guitar pop harmonies and arena-rock scale.

Check out the full EP below, and read Welsh’s exclusive track-by-track guide here.

Impermanency - So the first thing to say is that all of these were written during lockdown on ableton as I was teaching myself how to produce. So I think there’s a rawness, and an artificiality to all these tunes that isn’t there before. I really like that. “Impermanency” was originally called “The Enemy Within” and it’s musical arrangement is almost identical to the demo. All we added in when we played it live was that pure evil bridge bit (“there’s things that I cannot control” etc). It’s just about circles and layers and building and taking apart. C and Am the only two chords for almost all of it. So it’s about creating something interesting over that, and I just was adding layers and layers of guitars till we got to somewhere near where the finished tune is.

Then I was speaking nonsense over it while coming up with a melody and I kinda arrived on that rhythm that happens when I say “and every thought I’ve had since then has walked this path the same” and liked it. The lyrics were written once everything was together in the studio. I was standing outside in Liverpool in December, and my breath disappeared and I just started writing. I think I wrote the whole of those lyrics in about 20 mins. It’s also maybe the best lyrics I’ve ever written. “Impermanent, intelligent, interned within decay. Older every second every minute every day. Sentiment is reticent but time strips all away, so while I’ve any left at all ye know I’m gonna say…”. That’s decent, that.

Aw The Time - I think this started with that guitar riff at the start and I built it from there. The key thing here is that weird semitonal riff at the end that gives it the feeling of a fret less guitar or something. That and the bass, drop d guitar and synth bass all being the same kinda volume so they merge into this pure muddy, dirty bass sound. I love it. Our most danceable tune ever, and it’s about me not being able to sleep. There’s no metaphor here, it’s literally about sleeping in aw the time. Aw means all, by the way. Aw my lovin I will give to you. Aw the small things. Etc. it’s meant to be a laugh, it’s shooting for you laughing at some of the lyrics. And I like the multiple voices playing off each other in the tune. It represents the 3 minutes or so of delirious glee that you get amid the 12 hours of not sleeping.

Slack Jaw - It’s a pretty straight up rock power chord riff that it all evolved round. Then that lead filling in the space and I just sang over it “it’s a slackjaw, oh my love” and went yeah I’ll definitely have to change that. That doesn’t mean anything. Then as I tried, I realised that if you land on a good chorus you don’t change it to make sense, you change the rest of the song. So it became about working slackjaw into a song. I tried making it literal, like someone was astounded or something, but it was a boring concept. So I took a leaf out of smells like teen spirit and made it much more about evoking a feeling than having a narrative go through it. It’s basically written in “flow” or whatever ye call it. Autowriting. I just closed my eyes and wrote and then edited it to fit. I described it once as Hives meets Le Tigre and I stand by that. What a compliment to give yer own tune eh.

Whatever Forever - Ach it’s a lovely song this, it’s just a true expression of really being absolutely infatuated with a person and wanting to spend every second of the rest of your life with them. It’s started w that guitar picking thing that starts the song, then I built everything around that and it’s much more about layers again than massive structural changes. The harmonies are really nice in this, I’m proud of how we take it down and up and down again a few times before this absolute face melting solo hits you. Again, it’s about creating a feeling and the feeling of being in love is dizzying, it’s this thing that makes you scared and excited in equal measure and that kinda results in this overflow of emotions. So I think the song being a huge silly love song reflects that love often feels like that. There’s also these lovely low power chords that play throughout the chorus that are so nice it made me consider taking everything else out the song and just making it vocals and one guitar. I’ll maybe do it live like that someday.