Siouxie & The Skunks Issue “Mr. Cock O’ Nut” Single & Video

Siouxie & The Skunks have returned with Mr. Cock O’ Nut, the second single taken from their forthcoming album, Songs About Hiding, that is due out on December 4th via Wild Honey Records. There was no single moment when things went wrong. Mr. Cock O’ Nut is about something more insidious: the slow process by which the unacceptable becomes ordinary. A little more concrete, another compromise, another piece of ugliness swallowed until, one day at a time, we learn to call the whole thing inevitable. It’s fertile ground for Siouxie & the Skunks. Formed by five kids armed with new toys, punk records and a healthy disregard for keeping things tidy, the band have always found something worth singing about in the collision between everyday life and the messier business of actually living it. On Mr. Cock O’ Nut, however, the lens widens.

Mr. Cock O’ Nut takes aim at the bargain made in the name of progress: the idea that everything must grow, produce and justify its existence, while dreaming, wasting time or simply imagining something different become luxuries we can no longer afford. There’s a physical tension to the track that suits the subject. Bass and drums push insistently forward while the guitar scratches at the edges, leaving space for a vocal carrying frustration without turning it into empty rage. The pressure builds rather than simply exploding, giving the song the uneasy feeling of trying to find room to breathe inside the machinery it describes. Yet buried beneath all that concrete is a stubbornly hopeful idea: if we were capable of putting our faith in progress at any cost, perhaps we can learn to believe just as fiercely in taking care of one another. If it doesn’t work today, try again tomorrow. One day at a time.