On 'The Family Computer', Skiving are logging in and burning out.

By Hard of Hearing on February 3, 2026

On their debut LP, Skiving map Britain's emotional and economic dead ends through wiry hooks and feral satirical jabs.

Photo: Hannah Hayden | Words: A. L. Noonan

Late capitalism has long since abandoned the pretence of delivering comfort, instead offering an endless carousel of optimised inconvenience disguised as progress. For younger generations raised on the promise that technological acceleration would liberate them from drudgery or precarity, the reality has proved otherwise. Into this atmosphere of disillusionment step Skiving with their debut album, 'The Family Computer', a record that stares directly into the glowing screen of modern Britain and finds something quietly insidious blinking back.

Rebranded from their previous incarnation as Human Resources, the London five-piece hone their artistic identity into something more cutting and with sharper claws. Sonically, Skiving construct their world through wiry post-punk scaffolding. Guitars and saxophones twitch and recoil, drums and bass skitter forward with stimulant precision, and melodies are spat with a cathartic vitriol, making for a record as immediate as it is prophetic.

The album's opening statement, 'Ich Bin Ein Beginner', lunges forward with mechanical insistence, presenting self-optimisation as a kind of existential performance review. Its propulsion feels deliberately breathless, mirroring a culture where personal growth is measured less by fulfilment and more by relentless activity. By contrast, 'The National Lottery' introduces a buoyant, near-playful bounce, dissecting the national obsession with sudden fortune through lyrics that treat hope itself as a commodified fantasy product, available in weekly instalments and statistically guaranteed disappointment.

Elsewhere, 'Things Made Of Metal' offers one of the album's most cutting cultural dissections. The track unfolds as a coldly observant portrait of Britain's centrist political temperament: polished, durable, and utterly impotent. The band's instrumentation mirrors this rigidity, layering angular riffs that feel simultaneously sturdy and suffocating, as though progress itself has been welded into decorative immobility.

What ultimately elevates 'The Family Computer' beyond copycat, state-of-the-nation whingecore is Skiving's instrumental bite combined with potent lyricism, which thrives on contradiction, humour and volatility. Their writing feels populated by intrusive thoughts and culturally specific anxieties that accumulate like unopened browser tabs full of vinegar and existential malaise. Throughout the record, Skiving demonstrate an instinctive understanding that satire flourishes best when delivered with velocity. The album rarely lingers long enough to become didactic, instead ricocheting between observation and absurdity with a restless energy that mirrors the informational overload it critiques. Their arrangements remain tightly wound yet never sterile, allowing flashes of melodic warmth like on closer 'Conversations With David Berman (Was That Civilised?)', to puncture the record's more caustic moments, like unexpected sincerity breaking through layers of protective irony.

'The Family Computer' ultimately stands as a jittery yet remarkably cohesive portrait of contemporary Britain – a nation suspended between nostalgia for systems that no longer function and optimism for futures that seem permanently delayed. Skiving capture this contradiction with clarity, wit and a carefully calibrated sense of chaos. The result is a debut that feels acutely aware of its cultural moment without becoming trapped inside it, offering instead a sharply observed chronicle of modern disillusionment delivered with both teeth and undeniable charm.