"someone dropped their guts in the bar bus / and I am suffocating in my chair / social obligation keeps me there..."
The beautifully endearing snap and tickle of "Two Little Birds" by Publicity Department, the solo project of Sean Brook, singer and primary songwriter from London's alt-rock outfit Brunch, bathed in a harmonious embrace of (maybe) a melodeon, acoustic guitar and Brook's lovely telling British vocal delivery hooks me in right away as the melancholy lyrics paint a picture of being put on by life.
"someone dropped their guts in the bar bus / and I am suffocating in my chair / social obligation keeps me there / and the / realization I can't go anywhere / for at least the duration / of a shot back inside / so I practice exhalation / and focus on what's going on outside..."
AND the sense is that while the meek will not inherit the earth they surely will be buried in it, so better to navigate it with any grace and all the smarts we can muster up as retribution will be ours in some way, right? The song gets iconically indie rock heavy in a kind of comely power pop-esque way that made me think of both Weezer, XTC, Modest Mouse and the Pixies. While I write this it may not feel exactly right as a descriptor but that's ok, the meek, afterall have a habit of doubting themselves.
Anyway, I dig this song. I will no doubt be taking the old guitar off the homemade wall hanger and give it a try because it will inevitable make me happy, it sure will, what a chorus. Love it.
The track if from Publicity Department's upcoming third album "Old Master" set to drop on Feb 7th, 2025. How exciting!
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[After making 2023's 'Big Understander' in a studio with a full band, the third Publicity Department album, 'Old Master', sees the project return to the set up of the first record, with Sean Brook handling all the writing, performing and mixing duties. It captures a time where, having moved into a new house, Brook discovered a shed in the garden that had not been mentioned in the listing. This was quickly set up as a makeshift studio and the album was made over a few months in late 2023. It is consequently a move back into more lo-fi, homespun territory, and features a collection of songs variously from the perspective of old men raging at a world they have all but destroyed but no longer understand, and the young people trying to make sense of what’s left.]
[credits]
[This album was written, performed, recorded and mixed by Sean Brook, except the drums on track 9 which were played by Joshua Belcher, and the chorus melody on track 8 which was written with Adrian McCusker in about 2010.]
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://publicitydepartment.bandcamp.com/album/old-master
https://www.instagram.com/publicity_department/
https://x.com/pub_dept
https://bsky.app/profile/publicitydept.bsky.social
Publicity Department is the solo project of Sean Brook, singer and primary songwriter from London's alt-rock triers Brunch (“the lost middle ground of Los Campesinos! and Fugazi I didn’t know I’d always wanted”– For The Rabbits). Taking influence from his songwriting heroes David Gedge, Brian Wilson, John Cale and John Shuttleworth; Publicity Department was intended as an outlet for Brook's pop sensibilities whilst retaining the fuzzed-out feel of 90s alt-rock.
Publicity Department, singer songwriter Sean Brook, lead singer from Brunch, London, UK, alt folk, indie rock, abstractions, dissonance, progressive pop, "Two Little Birds", alt rock, new album "Old Master",
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