Description

Track Listing

1. Things Have Changed (Radio Edit)
2. Fear Factory
3. Your Little England
4. Things Have Changed (Full Version)

All songs written by SJ Brett
Recorded and engineered by Paul Pascoe at Church Road Recording Company, Hove

SJ Brett – Vocals, Guitars
Nick Van Vlaenderen – Drums
Paul Pascoe – Bass
Charlotte Glasson – Saxophone, Violin, Flute, Percussion

Things Have Changed

Since the disbandment of The Mojo Fins, song writing continued apace for me. But instead of songs finding their way out into the world via the usual “writing/rehearsing/releasing” cycle they simply gathered dust in boxes on a shelf. After some cajoling I did find myself playing live again in a new band context. This band includes the talents of Nick Van Vlaenderen (Drums) Oddur Runnarson (Guitar – ex-Lamb) and Paul Pascoe (Bass – Beat Hotel/Barry Adamson) and despite the challenges of the ‘fits and starts’ recording approach undertaken during lockdown, we were able to capture the playing of everyone barring Oddur. You’ll just have to come and see us live to witness the brilliance of Mr Runnarson.

In order to get things going in a live sense, some songs from those boxes found their way into a live set. Things Have Changed happened to be one of them. It immediately felt exciting to play live and garnered a great reaction from the audiences that we played to during this time. It appears on this EP in its full studio realisation resplendent with the addition of the wondrous sax, flute and violin of my friend, the legendary Charlotte Glasson (Nick Cave/Divine Comedy/Charlotte Glasson Band).

The song itself has its roots in very a specific moment of time when I was visiting family in Belfast with my young son. We were staying in a flat overlooking an area of Belfast I had lived in during my late teens and very early one morning, before my son awoke, I found myself staring out on this half lit old stomping ground as it slowly came to life and was flooded with the memories of the people I had known when I lived in the city as well the recollections of the mesmeric childhood summers spent back in the place that always felt like home.

The lyric therefore draws on these recollections of people, places, attempts to fit in, musty under-stair aromas and the displacement of my parents in early 1970’s which resulted in their emigration to the safe arms of Brighton.

A beloved childhood Spider-Man top (purchased in Belfast during one of those summer holidays) also finds its way into those lyrical recollections albeit now worn by my son and also appears on the cover artwork for this EP, modelled by him.

Fear Factory

Contained amongst the many songs sitting on the shelf written post Mojo Fins that hitherto have never seen the light of day is an album entitled ‘Anglosphere’. This collection of songs concerned themselves mostly with the socio-political turmoil that many of the people I know and love have found themselves in within the past 10 years and included the rigours of post-Brexit limbo and anxiety.

Fear Factory is a song which draws on a trajectory of time inclusive of the double speak narrative and vilification of immigrants in the ‘hostile environment’ of May’s Home Office tenure as well as the early implementation of welfare cuts enacted by this government.

Your Little England

Perhaps unsurprisingly this song also springs from the unreleased ‘Anglosphere’ album of songs and is essentially an attempt to capture the pain and limbo felt by so many in the often politically hate-filled days before and after 2016’s referendum. Specifically this song was born of the realisation that two of my closest and dearest friends who married and made their life in Brighton would indeed be leaving this country because of such pain and limbo brought upon by Brexit. I can’t begin to understand the economic rationale that has been made for the justification of leaving the EU (although I note that we are very much not living in the ‘promised land’ when it comes to the current plight of British farming and fishing industries) but I do know the pain associated with saying goodbye, at least in a geographical sense, to loved ones (the couple who influenced this song) that have been forced into an impossible decision.

Lyrically the song lives in this moment and still feels as relevant now as it did in 2016. The first iteration of our live band was in part ushered into life by my dear friend and one half of the displaced couple I mention here, Adam Atkins. Adam was a member of The Mojo Fins, is an incredible musician and songwriter in his own right and once upon a time contributed to this song in its full live arrangement. The version presented on this EP features only acoustic guitar, bass and once again the thankfully ever present and always transcendent playing of Charlotte Glasson on flute and violin. Thematically and for entirely different causation the song also shares some connective tissue to the experiences and eventual displacement of my parents as evoked in Things Have Changed.