Reigniting GoGo Penguin

Interview, From the Magazine, GoGo Penguin

By Kira Grunenberg I Aug. 15, 2023

“There is a bit of a theme — that it’s a sense of optimism and a sense of togetherness,” bassist Nick Blacka says of the new GoGo Penguin album.
(Photo: Emily Dennison)

Samuel Clemens once said, “What is joy without sorrow? What is success without failure? What is a win without a loss? What is health without illness? You have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. There is always going to be suffering. It’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.” The author better known as Mark Twain prompts humanity to consider two important facets of life: perspective born from contrast and, more specifically, how humanity faces and navigates through adverse times.

The gentlemen of U.K. trio GoGo Penguin don’t reference Twain as a point of inspiration behind the music of Everything Is Going To Be OK (XXIM Records), the trio’s sixth full-length record and first album with Jon Scott, now the band’s drummer. Nonetheless, a prevailing sense of duality surfaces throughout the album. It’s understandable, given the cavalcade of changes that pianist Chris Illingworth and bassist Nick Blacka endured in the time leading up to and during the making of the recording. Blacka’s mother and brother both passed of cancer within months of one another, and Illingworth’s grandmother, too. For these personal experiences then to be juxtaposed with the mutual decision for former drummer Rob Turner to depart GoGo Penguin, the quiet directness of statement-turned-title Everything Is Going to Be OK suddenly takes on immense emotional weight — like an anchor helping to stabilize the very question of how the members of GoGo Penguin actually are.

“I’d say things are pretty good, generally — very, very good,” Illingworth says of the band over a Zoom call from his home. “It’s been really nice kind of getting back into a good, solid year of touring. We’ve made the EP [Between Two Waves] and an album with Jon [Scott], so it feels as if Jon’s always been there now.”

Illingworth’s response rings with unflinching positivity. Blacka shares Illingworth’s contentment but takes a moment to acknowledge some contrasting sentiments, as they, too, bear relevance toward how GoGo Penguin arrived at this milestone.

“We overcame a lot of challenges,” Blacka says, via a separate Zoom. The band is together but apart, an arrangement that makes for an interesting parallel while talking about the pandemic, still an inevitable subject. “The work everyone did with the COVID thing, that was a really strange time. But [the pandemic] gave us a lot of time to reflect on stuff and take stock of things, realize what we did and didn’t want, and now we’re in the period after that, which is feeling really positive. But, yeah, there’s a lot of life stuff going on for everyone.”

Knowing that the trio has been, and continues to contend with, an interconnected set of circumstances that vacillate between triumphant and trying, “You’re Stronger Than You Think,” the title of Everything Is Going to Be OK’s opening track, seems almost like an added mantra that provides support through its subtle statement of encouragement and its musicality.

A cyclical, sonically crisp and calming motif of plucked-but-muted piano strings presents itself in classic GoGo Penguin fashion. The melody fires nimbly, the phrasing fosters intrigue. The band’s tone has developed into a beautifully polished whole; and the piece eventually introduces a dramatic and unexpected element: Blacka playing a Moog Grandmother synthesizer over his upright bass. All of this showcases how GoGo Penguin continues to stretch established bounds, with personal adversity actually serving to spur them on.

“I think [our experiences with loss] have just given us a bit of freedom to think, ‘Well, what have we got to lose?’” says Blacka. “Why can’t we play a Moog Grandmother synth bass guitar [and] do these kinds of things?”

Hearing new musical ideas so soon on the record might feel slightly shocking, but the immediacy also underscores a sense of freedom and strength — freedom to try new things and strength to follow through even when it might have felt easier for Illingworth and Blacka to stay with what they have known thus far.

“The studio became a sanctuary for us — a nice refuge to get away from all this stuff in real life and then just work on ideas and not be inhibited,” Blacka says. “We might have gotten a bit overly self-conscious toward the past couple of albums, so it’s nice to ditch that as well.”

Certainly, there’s no rulebook that says GoGo Penguin needs to adhere to a specific set of sounds, writing styles or thematic approaches. Still, it’s understandable, even amid the group embracing new possibilities, that the group’s long history might prompt an extra moment of consideration around whether or not deviating from established norms felt like the right decision.

“We never wanted to tell people what to think when they listen to our music,” Blacka says. “But I think after everything we’ve gone through with [the new album], there is a bit of a theme — that it’s a sense of optimism and a sense of togetherness. So we don’t mind those [ideas] being conveyed in some of the music and the titles. I think that’s quite important. I think we’ve just decided to be a lot more honest about things as well. You know, just try and be openly quite emotional.”

The more one unpacks Everything Is Going to Be OK, the easier it becomes to notice just how much GoGo Penguin has given personal emotion more power to guide and shape the band’s writing this time around. “Everything started moving in the right direction from a very uncertain place, and it’s no secret we were really, really excited about it, and it’s just getting better and better,” says Blacka. “And this record really captures a lot of that. So, yeah, it is quite emotional.”

Entering this next chapter absent that prior emotional history, Scott recalls an exchange with Illingworth early in their decision to collaborate that shows just how well Scott’s personal mentality toward playing with the band aligned with the emotional place that Illingworth and Blacka wanted to get to for this album.

“When I first came down to play with the band, Chris and I had a little chat afterwards, over a drink,” Scott says. “We talked a lot about the reasons for playing music together and I think it’s — it’s an experience. There’s no point in playing music together unless it’s better than anything you can do by yourself. I think that links into the feeling that it should be a joyous experience, making music together. That emotion hopefully comes across.”

The interplay between emotional connection, musical collaboration and collective growth wasn’t some idyllic concept Illingworth and Scott spoke of in abstract. In fact, it wasn’t even something that took a long time to coalesce.

“[Nick and Chris], from the beginning, were really open to what I wanted to bring in, and there was never a sense of, ‘Rob [Turner’s] gone, can you come and be Rob?’ It was, ‘We’ve checked out some things you’ve done, and we think that’s the sound that we could use. Let’s see how it works together.’ I never felt like the guys were trying to shape me into their idea of what the GoGo Penguin drummer should be.”

One could be forgiven for feeling somewhat curious about the group’s journey toward finding levity and reigniting their spark for music making. Despite tensions nearly driving the band to dissolve, it was the renewed perspective that Blacka and Illingworth found while supporting each other through their trials that brought them closer and inspired new music.

Additionally, both found their relationships with music had changed. For Illingworth, the contrasting experiences of losing his grandmother and the birth of his child were like beacons of clarity around uncertainty and even a touch of guilt that arose as he felt more and more motivation to make changes in his life.

“For a period of time there was no gigging whatsoever,” Illingworth says. “There was not even playing music with other people. I actually stopped playing music quite a lot, even on my own. I felt I didn’t want that as part of my life for a while. I needed a break from it. And part of me started worrying about that, thinking, ‘Is [this] a bad thing? Should I feel [this] way? Surely [music] is supposed to be this really important part of my life.’ I realized that it is but so are many other things. And a lot of those things had been pushed to the side and sacrificed and not focused on as much, and family was one of those things. Music means a lot, but family means even more.”

Though the specifics of Blacka’s challenges differed from Illingworth’s, there’s a resonance. The pair found themselves looking upward from a low point of intense struggle. Yet, as time and gradual changes kept coming to pass, their vantage points became less detached and more invigorated.

“[I was] sort of in a place of not really understanding why I’m [making music] anymore,” says Blacka. “At the same time, I had it hanging over me that my brother had cancer, and I knew that he was going to pass away at some point. So that was another concurrent thing. And then I lost my mum before that. So there’s all this stuff going on. But also, Rob [Turner] leaving the band was a huge impact.”

“After that,” Blacka continues, “it was a case of [Turner’s departure being] the big catharsis and then [Chris and I] decided to carry on. That’s when the real bond happened with me and Chris, because we really had gone through some stuff together. I started thinking a bit more intently about what music meant, what I wanted out of it, what I actually liked about it still and what I wanted to pursue. I’m starting to rediscover all the things that I love about [music]. There’s a real passion in it and a place to be myself, which Chris has supported, and Jon, as well.”

Against the incessant tides of change and the unpredictability of the future, the simplicity of the support found in Everything Is Going to Be OK is one concrete slice of confidence to which listeners can repeatedly return. As the creators of this musical oasis, the perception of comfort varies between Illingworth, Blacka and Scott. However, GoGo Penguin has just as permanent a reminder as everyone else of where they were and where they ended up. It’s in those moments where “OK” doesn’t feel close by, that the very reminder of this album’s existence can help bring that feeling back into view.

“I think [Everything Is Going to Be OK] will always stand out as being very poignant and hugely significant,” Blacka says.

“Once [we’ve] made [an album], it’s not for us to listen to. So we make it, and we enjoy it the whole time that we make the album and go through that process. As soon as it comes out, my relationship to listening to it is totally different. It just serves a different function. But we do remember what it’s about, why it was made and why we did it that way. And I don’t think that will ever change as we go on.” DB