New Video: Yr Poetry - songs that mention radio are cheating
Don't call it a come back! I've been here for years.
The words of LL Cool J at the start of his Hip Hop classic 'Mama Said Knock You Out' are often seen as a clarion call to his fans that's he's back to take over. But there is a vunerability in those words if you look closely. The battlecry of a survivor has to be equally as reassuring as it is confrontational; there are those who've been there all along and need to have your back after all.
I'm always conscious of mixing politics and music when I write this blog, but at times like now, it seems impossible not to. Today - after a tumultuous week of running out of loyal allies to spin his haphazard approach to Government - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has finally been pushed over the edge. Of course, he was never going to go quietly.
Amonsgt a flurry of Ministerial resignations he decided to sack Michael Gove, his Minister for Levelling Up and Housing. Gove has long held ambitions akin to Johnson himself and is the perfect example of a leader keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. According to some reputable Westminister reporters, Gove tried to further apply pressure to the PM by giving him a 9PM deadline to resign - in turn, Johnson sacked him at 8.59.
His resignation speech proved this afternoon that humility is not in his bank of character traits. Blaming the herd rather than his own ineptness was the sign of man completely devoid of any self awareness. An arrogance that can only be born out of privilege. He'll never learn. Perhaps he'll never need to fully. Just don't call it a come back when he inevitably worms his way back into the public consciousness in years to come..
It's not strictly a come back either, but Birmingham's YR POETRY may well be familiar to some of you from their musical past. Comprised of band members Alexei Berrow and Junior Laidly, the lo-fi punk duo have some serious credentials, between them appearing in bands such as itoldyouiwouldeatyou, Yr Friends, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, Fridge Poetry and most notably perhaps johnny foreigner. The latter were a band I took to my heart when their album waited up til it was light came out in 2008. It featured singles such as 'Our Bi-Polar Friends', 'Eyes Wide Terrified' and 'Salt, Peppa and Spinderella' which played around with off-kilter dynamics that bands like Cap'n Jazz had earlier made their own.
Having been in bands during an era when the traditional model of record label was strecthed to it's limits and artists found it increasingly difficult to make a career, the duo started YR POETRY almost as an experiment into creating a new finincial model for themselves as independent artists. "We started this band like a newly home'd couple buys a puppy and it kinda accidently grew into a wolf", the pair say of the project. See the video below.
During the infancy of the band, they released two E.Ps - No Tribes in 2014 and 2016's Rocket Season, which led to the band experiment with a subscription model that would see them record and release three further E.Ps on a 22 track compilation with additional extras for fans.
The new single from is the brilliantly titled 'songs that mention radio are cheating' - the follow up to 2021's debut 'Porthmadog, dog'. Gentle vocals sit on a fragile arpeggio that has an almost Country-tinge to it, with the lyrics seemingly snapshots of conversations about music between a couple - but the band have a different take of an unconventional love song with Alexei saying:
"The second half of this song is about a man who wrote a song and the woman he wrote it for. The first half is all I can remember of that song. I hope they're both doing well. "
YR POETRY release new album Yr Poetry Ruin Music on August 5th via Bandcamp
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