Skinny Knowledge
Meet the Dorset band who channelled lockdown frustration into bursts of pop-punk catharsis.
“I want to make big, singalong choruses that stick in your head.”
JAMES SHEPPARD/PRESS
ONE PERSON’S CRISIS is another’s opportunity. Or so it proved for the Bournemouth musician known to his friends as Andy Smooth, when he found his regular gigs in local cover bands drying up as the pandemic shut down the live entertainment scene in the spring of 2020.
While many bands and others in the music industry were forced to press the pause button on their career, Smooth (aka Andy Leslie-Smith) realised the time was right for him to fulfil a long-held ambition to make a self-written record. “I was bored,” he says. “So I wrote an album, and kind of made it on my own.” The result was the debut album by Skinny Knowledge, Don’t Turn Out The Lights, a refreshingly raw blast of high-octane, melodically charged punk-pop featuring stompers such as I Wonder.