Introducing the album with the most recently released single ‘You.’, Kill Bell set the precedent for the ensuing overdrive-heavy guitar sections, echoing vocals, hard hitting and steadying percussion and foundational basslines. As the album progresses, the listener embarks on a timeline of harmonisation that ebbs and flows between mystifying, grittier sounds and more positive induced auditory emotivity. Despite a connection to the genre of garage-punk maintained throughout the full length of the album, the disparate nuance of each track is made evident in the juxtaposition of effect established between ‘Sad Song’, ‘not on loop’ and ‘Bathtub’.

Sandwiched in between the distinct differential in sound of the aforementioned tracks is the song ‘Grrl’ - an upbeat track, recognisable with the like of 90s grunge outfit Hole. Its down stroke-based guitar riff maintaining sturdiness throughout the entirety of its two minutes and 19 seconds, with only the vocals trumping it for prominence in volume. Continuing on, the next song ‘Alex Left The Light On’ incorporates a thumping but slowed down rhythm section established from the outset as the lyrics re-appropriate and recreate the story of the characters from the cult classic novel A Clockwork Orange.

The next track ‘Baby’ explodes into a ferocious conglomeration of fast-paced contributions from all instruments involved, overlaid with a lyrical refrain delivered with a sense of urgency. The eeriness and experimentation of Kill Bell becomes apparent in the following track ‘Minimal’ - a song laden with a psychedelic guitar intro, background white noise and a perennial, metallic melody. Immediately after the conclusion of the jarring ‘minimal’, the album seems to possess a late crescendo-like nature following on from a small interlude in the form of a church bell established introduction on the title track. The final song then breaks out into a heavy and distorted bassline, with the full force of the song proceeding, as the elongated vocals pair with the instrumental to establish a rewarding harmony. Rounding out a predominantly introspective based narrative, the album concludes abruptly, prompting a desire to replay the sub-30 minute tracklist.

Kill Bell kindly have shared the creative process behind each track that makes up i don’t think that i have what you want’.

You.

First cab off the rank we have our latest single, which actually happens to be our most recently written track! Nick pumps out tracks like an assembly line and I had been cycling through the latest batch of demos to see if we could bulk up the album. ‘You.’ was a track I hadn’t really considered, but on an extra long and dull shift, that fuzzy dragging bass got stuck in my head and I was determined to write its vocals as soon as I got home. From there it was recorded and mastered within about a week and we slapped it on the album just in time! 

Sad Song

Before our songs are properly written we tend to give them dumb names that act kind of like mnemonic devices, but when I got the demo ‘sadsong.mp3’ I wanted to play with the simplicity of it. It really did sound like a sad song and I didn’t want to lose that, so we used melody and song as an analogy for self confidence and assurance - feeling sure of yourself until you’re confronted with someone else’s song. We like to joke that ‘Sad Song’ is our ballad, but we promise it did initially start out that way! We needed a track to give us a bit of a breather mid set so we started off with a nice and simple bass riff to cruise through. Production is where things really got out of hand and we couldn’t help but dirty it up a bit - given how smooth the vocals go in this one we didn’t want to lose too much edge. 

Grrrl

‘Grrrl’ has gotta be the track we have the most fun playing live! It’s kinda shouty, I get to have my hands free to play around during the verses and of course it has that signature KB chromatic riff! The lyrics aren’t too cryptic in this one, they basically say fuck off. I wish I could say this comes from a place of confidence in your own boundaries, but really I wrote this about those early stages of seeing someone who likes you, and freaking tf out. There’s a fat load of vocals on this track, and I especially love the ones that come in after the second chorus - they give me real Splendora vibes! We basically just added vocal track after vocal track until we found harmonies we were happy with - it scared the hell out of me when we accidentally blasted them all at once, but I think we found a happy medium.

not on loop

This was the first track I got to write for Kill Bell. Up until then we had our former frontman Danny writing the tracks as I hadn’t found my feet yet. I had also just started taking antidepressants and was in that stage of feeling really numb and out of it - I was feeling pretty uninspired and couldn’t work out what to write about, so I wrote about just that! Save for that fuzzy driving chromatic riff we love making use of, ‘not on loop’ is probably a more accurate representation of a Kill Bell ballad than ‘Sad Song’ is (even if we can’t help getting a little punchy in the chorus).

Bathtub

‘Bathtub’ is another real old one from the KB vault. Danny left us with the first verse before he raced off to France following love, so when we were finding tracks for the album we decided to dig this one up and give it a second chance at life. We decided we didn’t want to add too much more in the way of lyrics and keep it in its more minimal form, but we were playing around a lot with instrumentation during the production phase. Nick had been listening to a bit of Queen at the time and was trying to convince me how cool it would be to incorporate a bunch of harmonic guitars - I wasn’t so convinced. We cut the proposed harmonics down by about half which I still wasn’t keen on initially, but Nick was right and they ended up really working - especially in the outro, it seems to be a bit of a crowd favourite.

Alex Left The Light On

The lyrics of this one have Danny written all over them and I couldn’t tell you what it was about if my life depended on it, except that he’d watched A Clockwork Orange right before writing it. That being said, the lyrics are pretty much all that stayed the same on this track between 2018 and now. During its revival in early 2020 we’d been playing with former Girl Germ’s drummer Layla, and she gave us a new take on a few of our songs at the time. It was the first time we’d played with another female vocalist so we were messing around with harmonies a lot, and on this one we decided we just loved harmonies over the whole thing - which Layla ended up recording with us for the track. I think that inspired Nick to take it into production with a very different sound from anything else we’d been working on - it has a bit more of a vintage rock sound than punk.

Baby

‘Baby’ was Kill Bell’s first ever release, and probably the first track we ever wrote. It’s got a super speedy guitar run from Nick and stabby minimal lyrics from Danny - 'Baby' was us starting off and going all out into cliche punk, before we’d really worked out any kind of nuance or influences we wanted to consider. Back in the day it was a real adjustment for me to go from my history in jazz vocals to something a lil more screamy in those choruses, but these days I get to sing the whole thing and it’s a great track to play live. 

Minimal

‘Minimal’ by name and minimal by nature, this track is pretty experimental and we weren’t totally sure we were gonna include it on the album til the 11th hour. I think it’s the fun lil almost staccato guitar riff that got us to keep bringing it up for consideration, and it might even be my fave bass riff on the album - a real underdog. Back when we were writing it we just referred to it as Hot Chip, and it still does have a bit of a monotonous synthpop vibe to it. Vocally I basically wanted to add as little as possible to the track, so as not to not detract from the way the bass and guitar interact with each other, it’s got a really cool effect on its own.

I Don’t Think That I Have What You Want

Our title track! It’s in the running for one of our favourites we’ve put out. ‘I Don’t Think I Have What You Want’ is kind of a quintessential KB song, and combines a lot of the techniques we like to use in our writing. We’ve actually written quite a few songs that play with time signature switches, but the way the drums compliment the bass in this one make it a real stand-out. We decided to make this our title track and conclude with it as it ties up the overarching theme through the album pretty neatly. It focuses on coming of age through your mid twenties and feeling like you might not be doing enough with your life, but embracing that anyway.