The first album in 30 years from UK post-punk and new wave pioneers, Modern English!
Bands are like families, bound by something deeper than friendship – and liable to implode just
as irrevocably. Yet that familial bond can equally draw you back, and so it is that four-fifths of the
original Modern English hav e recorded their first album together in 30 years. Take Me To The
Trees not only reconnects the band to their roots, in the fervent and fecund world of late 1970s/
early 1980s post-punk Britain, but they have co-produced it with Martyn Young of Colourbox and
M/A/R/R/S fame, whose last production job was 1986. Moreover, the album’s beautiful cover is
by venerated art director Vaughan Oliver, whose very first sleeve design was Modern English’s
‘Gathering Dust’ single in 1980.
The band’s fired-up vitality is palpable in the album’s pulsating opener ‘You’re Corrupt’, laced
with Grey’s rant against corporate greed, “and the throwaway nature of modern culture. It’s a
time when even the truth is watered down.” ‘Sweet Revenge’ and ‘Flood Of Light’ equally have
the “edgy style” that Grey hears on Mesh And Lace, “and lyrically cut up, and strange.” Some
words, like ‘Don’t Seem Right’, were written in Suffolk, “so they’re gloomier,” while others were
penned in Thailand, like “Moonbeam”, “under starry skies and a full moon.” The album title (a
line from the song ‘Trees’) was also inspired by nature, “and to us getting lost along the way.”
The band have also found room for a new, spectral mood in the ballads ‘It Don’t Seem Right’ (“a
love song of people forced apart”) and ‘Come Out Of Your Hole’ (which started life as a sexual
image “before evolving into something else altogether” says Grey). As the album finally took
shape, the band took time away to tour, such as one incredible arena show in the Philippines,
“where we were driven around in a cavalcade!” Grey says. “That was amazing.” The band also
toured America again in the summer of 2016, playing their classic album Mesh And Lace in
its entirety, as the album was reissued by the US indie Drastic Plastic, whilst the band’s break
through hit ‘I Melt With You’ was featured on Netflix’s break-out sci-fi-horror series Stranger
Things. The family that is Modern English look like sticking together a while longer.
Track Listing:
01 You’re corrupt
02 Trees
03 Moonbeam
04 Something’s going on
05 Dark Cloud
06 Sweet Revenge
07 I feel Small
08 Come out of your Hole
09 Flood of Light
10 It don’t seem Right
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