(Don’t) take me back to the old days.
County Durham indie pop punk outfit and best band in the world* Martha are back, with the wonderfully upbeat and bleak ‘Please Don’t Take Me Back’, examining the way that we tend to look back on and romanticise the past.
The track is full of the trademarks that have made Martha such a lauded and celebrated act over their previous releases with endearing, singalong melodies, self-deprecating lyrics, and their signature northern flair providing a rousing listening experience that encapsulates everything that makes the outfit so beloved. Martha could probably sing to you about any kind of atrocities and injustices around the world, but their affable charm and undeniably fun energy would have you smiling and nodding your head all the same.
“The past was absolutely terrible. Don’t get us wrong, the present is also absolutely terrible, but that almost instantly becomes the past anyway, so we can quickly file it under ‘the past’” says the band. “The really good news is that the future appears to have been totally cancelled by the loathsome politicians, oligarchs and CEOs hell bent on destroying the planet and all life on it, so we probably won’t have to put up with this garbage for much longer anyway. Please don’t take me back.”
“In a genuinely terrifying twist of fate, just before we were due to shoot the video, [band member] Daniel’s partner Steph unexpectedly went into labour a whole seven and a half weeks before her official due date. Daniel therefore does not appear in the video. If you look very closely you might see how low-key terrified the rest of us look, which sort of fits the tone of the song. Austin Ellis Bartle was born on the 21/10/21 and after a slightly bumpy start, is now a healthy, happy little fella.”
*the opinion of this writer and not necessarily anybody else
