Label: Fire Records
Release date: 01.03.2024
Focus On Nature is the new studio album from celebrated post-psyche singer songwriter Nick Saloman and his band The Bevis Frond. Seventy-five minutes of glorious melodies that span 60s psych, English folk, Seattle art-punks The Wipers, the buzzsaw pop of Dinosaur Jr and Hendrix-esque explorations. There’s always an element of playful Englishness to their music. Heavily influencing the likes of The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Elliot Smith, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr, the cult icons have produced another off-kilter mix of melodic piano-led melancholy, acoustic ruminations, scratchy garage rock with a punky edge and full-on guitar histrionics. Like its much-praised predecessor, ‘Little Eden’, the new record studies the world’s weariness but fills out a bigger canvas; fast food and global warming, broken hearts and long gone nights out, everyday immortality and being God’s gift all share space. It’s like Townshend at his most thematic; Big Star in all their acoustic glory, perfectly balancing the punky garage rock combo who end up running on ‘Empty’ with Gilmour breaks that elevate it all to grandeur. Press Quotes: “Still mixing pop, punk and psych to giddy effect.” The Guardian // “Self- reflection is twinned with a rueful survey of the current state of the nation.” Uncut
A1 Heat A2 Focus on Nature A3 God's Gift A4 Vitruvian Man A5 A Mirror B1 Leb Off B2 Here For the Other One B3 Happy Wings B4 Empty B5 Wrong Way Round C1 Mr Freds Disco C2 Jack Immortal C3 Hairstreaks C4 Maybe We Got It Wrong D1 Brocadine D2 Big Black Sky D3 The Hug D4 I Can't Breathe D5 Hung on a Wire