Brighton trio Dutch Criminal Record unveil their new single “Oat Milk” from their forthcoming EP, Apathy Mixtape.

After a few years cultivating a feverish fanbase and playing gigs across Europe, Dutch Criminal Record are embracing a new chapter of their artistry with the release of “Oat Milk,” pulled from their upcoming EP Apathy Mixtape. Bringing together infectious indie sounds blended with a sky-soaring and intense guitars, “Oat Milk” is a captivating look into what is to come sonically from their EP. As a band who uses lyrics as a form of expression and a way to comment on issues in culture today, “Oat Milk” is the sonic embodiment of what Dutch Criminal Record does best.

“I wrote Oat Milk in the winter of 2022/23,” explains Joe Delaney-Stone. “Just sat at my computer waiting for a student to join an online lesson I was messing around with some chords and started to hum a bit of a melody along to them. As I started to develop the rest of the song I took a lot of inspiration from shoe gaze productions styles. Borrowing a lot from bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive’s early stuff and the Cure. The lyrics of the song are actually based around something Suella Braverman said in the House of Commons around October last year when I was writing the song. She blamed the just stop oil protests which were happening at the time on Labour and the SMP calling them the ‘Guardian reading, tofu eating wokerati’. Obviously, it’s a ridiculous thing to hear in British politics and something that wouldn’t sound out of place in a speech by Trump.”

Using that off-the-cuff remark as inspiration, Delaney-Stone dove in. “With the lyrics I tried to satirise this idea that the societal decay we’re experiencing in the UK right now is due to dairy alternatives, vegan food and pronouns rather than decades of neoliberalism by imagining that Tory politicians are going round London wincing every time they see a Linda McCartney sausage, obviously they aren’t. In the studio I tried to work on the vocal delivery to sound as bored, weary and apathetic as possible. When we where tracking the vocal initially I was singing brought and enthusiastically as possible but it just didn’t sound right so I went for a more subdued and indifferent tone as I think that reflects how lots of us feel when we hear this kind of overused sloganism in politics which is an easy way for politicians to avoid addressing issues and rial up their voter base.”

Oat Milk is out now.