Glasgow’s boundary-defying band Humour is back with “Neighbours,” their jagged and unyielding first single in nearly two years of post-hardcore intensity. Brought to you by the group’s longtime home of So Young, the song sees the band returning to a furious state that sounds like a mind unraveling in real-time.
From the opening notes, “Neighbours” is a controlled, sharp, off-kilter guitar work, and hammering rhythms conjure an almost suffocating texture. Every chord vibrates with tension, each tightening like a rope around the song’s protagonist, a man in the throes of paranoia. The band’s frontman, Andreas Christodoulidis, delivers his lines with so much urgency they verge on desperation, which suits the psychological turmoil at the center of the track. His delivery oscillates from spoken-word anxiety to all-out howls, accentuating the track’s manic energy.
Lyrically, “Neighbours” is unsettling in the most auspicious way. It follows a man who believes that invisible creatures are molesting him, messing with the heating, making noise at night, and who is driven to a breaking point by his paranoia. His solution is gassing up his apartment overnight in a last-ditch effort to eliminate the needless phantoms haunting him and his dreams. It’s bleak, ridiculous, and oddly relatable in its portrayal of loneliness and rising anxiety.
The accompanying Pedro Takahashi-directed video drives home the song’s claustrophobic themes. Close-ups, unsettling images, and increasing discomfort reflect the song’s slow burn toward insanity. It’s an apt visual representation of a song that will not let you get comfortable, will not let you get at ease, and will not stop pressing down harder.
For Humour, “Neighbours” is an assertion. And after almost two years of quiet, they’ve returned with something raw, visceral, and impossible to ignore. It’s a song that lingers on, an agonizing ride that reminds us why Humour is one of the most exciting bands on the scene. With this single, the band has demonstrated that their mastery over discomfort remains undiminished, just as they can translate paranoia into poetry, tension into art, and noise into something deeply, disturbingly human.
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