In February last year we supported The Paper Kites at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow. At that point it was the biggest gig I’d done under my own name. We played our best show to date as a band on that night, it was a great experience – Yet immediately afterwards, I started to feel strangely unfulfilled: I knew that it was time for me to start down the path towards my next phase of work.
Early the next day, half asleep, I travelled down to London to attend my Masters Degree graduation ceremony before rushing back north, this time on the last train to Yorkshire to spend the night in a B&B before meeting Jamie Evans for the first time the following morning. It had been suggested that he might be a good fit as a producer.
We clicked immediately. We began rewriting ‘A Love I Can’t Live Up To’ and, in the afternoon, we wrote ‘Travels’. The idea was to write material and get pre-production done for a four-track EP but we ended up having a really productive time of it and, two months later, we were recording an album in Antwerp, Belgium with Colin Brain (Audio and Mixing Engineer) and my two most trusted pals Richard Rayner (Drums) and Jack Tustin (Bass). We went to Antwerp because Jamie and I are both really into the Belgian bands Deus, Dead Man Ray, and Sukilove. It also worked really well because I wanted to get everyone away from the familiar territory so we would all focus on the making of the record.
Most of the tracks on the record are inspired by stories from my own life. ‘Life-Changing Moment’, ‘Depends On Where You Stand’, ‘A Love I Can’t Live Up To’, and ‘Travels’ are thematically linked by relationships, as is ‘Turning’, where I wonder how former lovers remember ‘their’ record, the one that they both look back on.
‘William’ is about my relationship with an imaginary childhood friend. Mine, no kidding, prevented me from being hit by a crashing car when I was about four, maybe five. When I described my imaginary friend to my parents they freaked out as what I was vividly describing was a soldier from the First World War, long before I knew anything about the war. The track explores the theme of whether something could have been done to save him from his fate and questions the right of governments to send young men to wars that they don’t really understand. ‘Firing Squad’ shares some ideas with ‘William’ as it’s also about people in positions of authority who abuse their power over others and stems from some situations from my own past: the music video for ‘Firing Squad’, available on the normal platforms, can further speak to the ideas behind this particular track.
The title track ’Bread & Circuses’ is about the current political situation, especially in the UK, though it was written and recorded well before the pandemic. The phrase “bread and circuses” is from a satire by the Roman poet Juvenal, writing in about AD100. It relates to politicians distracting citizens from protecting their own interests by providing colourful entertainments and free food. So short-term solutions assuage a population’s discontent but the ultimate price is so much higher than people realise. Sadly, I feel that the political sphere has become its own theatre of late, even without the creation of new distractions. We have a government seemingly unable to play by acceptable rules of engagement and an insipid opposition. It’s maddening when you consider how much is at stake at this moment.
‘The Story Is No Longer Available’ is about climate change, while ‘Grounded Butterfly’ was written after I observed a butterfly with a clipped wing struggling to fly free. I started to consider how frustrated it must feel, vulnerable and helpless as it was: would it want to lash out at the world if it had the sting to do so? I realise I was projecting my own frustrations at the time.
