Chris T-T returns with 9 Green Songs, his long-awaited follow-up to 2013's The Bear and a pseudo-sequel to his classic 2005 album 9 Red Songs. It's out 3 June. You can preorder now from our shop, from Amazon or download via iTunes. '#WorstGovernmentEver' is available instantly with digital preorders.
Watch the video for this prime cut of precise, sardonic anger, powered by austerity, bad leadership and porcine interactions.
9 Green Songs captures the vulnerable fury that bore the grassroots, folk-influenced approach of 9 Red Songs (an album that still resonates 10 years later), adding a modern Twitter feed tick-list of ideas, charged by the energy of his recent work with the Hoodrats. If anything T-T is becoming lyrically more radical. 'Love Me, I'm a Liberal' brutally indicts clicktivist sensibilities and “me, me” sensitivity of hipsters on social media, displaying their colours and doing not much else. 'Cutting A Longbow' recalls the spoken word live favourite ‘M1 Song’, in sound if not in content. Even then, this vocal diatribe is driven by pummeling percussion, giving it a rare menace. This contrasts wonderfully with 'A Garden On The Motorway’; an upbeat fairytale of green-fingered warfare on concrete commuting. But whether he's looking inward at his own faults or loudly gesturing at how we can all do better with less, T-T has put melodies to his disappointment, textures to our hypocrisy and, perhaps, a little hope in his hurt.
Chris hasn't been sitting on his hands all this time while conservatives (yes, small c) do their darnedest. Since The Bear he's toured extensively; released a gorgeous duet album of cover songs with folkie friend Gill Sandell (Walk Away, Walk Away); and even became the first Creative Fellow at a National Trust property – The Workhouse in Southwell – where in between tours he’ll compose new ballads of Victorian poverty.
After two excellent, tonally different albums – the treatise on the heart and gorgeous wordplay of Love Is Not Rescue and the full-tilt tumultuous 90s alt-rock instrumentation (with the Hoodrats) of The Bear – with 9 Green Songs we finally get more of what brought a lot of people to his music in the first place: Chris T-T stands up to shout loudly again, looks outwards, like a warm, terrible, friendly menace, who sees both dystopia and redemption on the horizon.
9 Green Songs tracklisting:
#WorstGovernmentEver
Love Me I'm A Liberal
Hallucinating
Cutting A Longbow
A Hard Rain
This Is What Drowning Is Like
A Garden On The Motorway
Anyone's Song
Admit Nothing
The Border Crossing
Live dates confirmed so far (new dates will appear on our gigs listing pages, including ticket links soon):
APRIL
16 99% Festival 2016
MAY
01 Handmade Festival 2016
06 Devizes The Lamb Inn
07 Sheffield Festival Of Debate At Eten Café
22 Winchester Railway Inn
27 Leeds Brudenell Social Club
28 Glossop Defiance Sessions At The Labour Club
JUNE
03 Somerset Barton Inn
04 Lewes Union Music Store (Instore)
05 Bristol Café Kino
08 London Free Fringe Benefit At The Bedford
09 Birmingham Tba
10 Manchester Star & Garter
11 Nottingham Tba
12 Glasgow Hug & Pint
18 Brighton Big Green Gig At Green Door Store
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