THE GOOD NATURED

For a band whose eldest member was born in 1991, the Good Natured sure seem to care a lot for the ’80s. From the British trio’s synth- and guitar-heavy dancepunk to songwriter/frontwoman Sarah McIntosh’s androgynous sense of style, the band exudes an indisputable sense of nostalgia for the Greedy ’80s. But, Lycra and shoulder pads aside, it makes sense: the innovative pop of that era was the music of their parents’ generation. “Our parents always listened to lots of stuff from their youth, like Blondie, Tears of Fears, and other stuff from the ’80s, so we grew up around that. And it definitely inspired and influenced us,” says McIntosh.

McIntosh, who was musical from early in on her life, began writing songs as a teenager. “From a young age, I always knew I wanted to make music. When I was fifteen, I realized that’s what I wanted to do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” she says. When it came time to form a band to accompany her for what was initially a solo project, she asked her younger brother Hamish to join her on bass. The siblings played as a duo for a while, until McIntosh met George Hinton in university and recruited him to serve as the band’s drummer. McIntosh and Hinton, both of whom were pursuing music degrees at the time, soon realized that they’d much rather focus on the band full-time than be in school and instead spent the years since 2008 releasing three EP’s. (“To be honest, I never liked university. I couldn’t get along with the whole vibe of it,” says Hinton, who admits to having spent his entire college loan on fur coats.)

On stage, McIntosh, her brother Hamish, and Hinton—twenty, eighteen, and nineteen, respectively—appear, like their music, much more mature than their ages would suggest. The songs on the Good Natured’s forthcoming still-untitled album, all written by McIntosh, are undeniably dark, in ways usually reserved for people much older and unluckier in life. Lyrics like, “So we’re standing all alone/and I’m naked to the bone” are less about sex and more about youthful vulnerabilities, all of which take on a desperate urgency when belted out in McIntosh’s strong, unwavering voice. They also lend the band the air of a Skins-like portrayal of teenage life in the UK: filled with sex, drugs, and depression, and played out by protagonists who grow up much faster than their parents would like.

“Many of the songs I’ve written are from personal experience, but obviously you can’t have bad experiences all the time, so some are about friends or memories,” McIntosh says. “I always write when I feel emotional about something, so that may be why there’s a tendency for the lyrics to be a bit dark.”

The album, which the band describes using the apt and appealing phrase “pop noir,” features a notable divergence between lyrical themes and sonic ones. While McIntosh sings about dark, depressive topics like drugs (on “Your Body Is A Machine”), relationships gone wrong (on “Be My Animal”), and self-destruction (on any given song), she does so over upbeat, danceable music produced by Robyn collaborator Patrik Berger and Marina and the Diamonds producer Liam Howe. Much like the ’80s pop classics that inspired them, the Good Natured’s synthy, percussive music creates a hopeful and triumphant bed for McIntosh’s inward-looking lyrics.

But for all her despondency, McIntosh still has the confident optimism of a twenty-year-old. When asked about her hopes for the new record, her response is simple: “I want it to go to number one.”

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