Tracklist:

1. Ghost Jury 09:44 video
2. Waiting For Nobody
3. Sic Box
4. The Bangles From Hell 01:41
5. Blind Williams
6. Second Act
7. Wreck
8. Hammering Screws
9. Spencer’s Position
10. Send Rope
11. Still Not
12. There You Go
13. Moper
14. Rope Science
15. New Low
16. Not Often
17. Dog
18. NMCTT
19. Scaping Goat
20. Chatarra
21. Scratched
22. Launder Me
23. In Ribbons
24. Big Deal
25. Little Numbers
26. Ancient Six
27. The Jag
28. Squirrel Pie
29. Even Funnier
30. Stuffed Pig
31. Hammerhead
32. Pork Chops
33. Precarious
34. The Blank Women
35. Fred Is Dead
36. Ex-Light
37. Comic Effect
38. Wild Fencing
39. Spares
40. Very High Frequency
41. Blue Cat
42. Heretic
43. Kate Is Late
44. English For Business
45. Dio Trick

Thomas House has been busy in the two years since Sweet Williams’ last LP. “I got very nervous about playing live, so I stopped. Quit all the bands I was playing in, stayed at home in Zaragoza with the cat and made tunes between classes.” Tunes that grew from fragments on old tapes or came fully formed in dreams in the small hours. He was sending us (Wrong Speed Records) a fistful of new songs every couple of weeks. Nobody knew where this was leading. There was a half-joke about House releasing his own version of The White Album, until another artist close to our hearts beat him to it. Then we realised: House turns forty-five in 2025. How about forty-five songs to celebrate? Bringing in neighbour Carl Jehle to co-produce, the pair spent last summer putting Four Five together in long, delirious sessions, stretching through the forty-plus midafternoon heat into the balmy small hours. More than a hundred songs were on the table. A significant chunk of the work was completed while House recovered from emergency dental surgery – “the worst pain I have ever experienced”. The results, House says, can be taken as a whole “if you’re mad enough,” or as three separate LPs. “The first one’s dark and dreamy, the second one’s got all the short and funny songs, and the third one wraps it up. I don’t wanna spoil the ending.”

What’s clear is that a triple LP has afforded the possibility to stretch out in directions Sweet Williams have not previously explored. Tape loops and warped, sampled voices butt up against brief, punky earworms. Influences are either worn on sleeves – PIL, The Amps, Beefheart – or nigh impossible to discern. Ever present, as ever, are repetition, space, and the sputtering growl of petrol guitars.

Four Five is a masterpiece. The perfect mix of spontaneity and obsession; of serendipity and sheer force of will. Not to mention maybe the only justifiable triple album ever made. “I thought this might be the last one, obviously, but then again obviously not. I’m just getting started.”