Hull born four-piece band Lumer unveil their new sin­gle today. Titled Eng­lish Dream, the track takes a bit­ter look at the par­lous state of the coun­try – and it’s not as if there isn’t plen­ty of mate­r­i­al on the sub­ject. Lumer have pre­vi­ous form of focus­ing on the social and polit­i­cal cli­mate; their EP Dis­ap­pear­ing Act, released ear­ly 2021, cov­ered a range of top­i­cal issues – and noth­ing appears to have changed for the bet­ter. As lead vocal­ist Alex Evans says about the new work:

“Eng­lish Dream tries to epit­o­mise my cyn­i­cal view of my coun­try. Why are you sup­posed to put so much in for very lit­tle in return? There is this con­stant bat­tle, it seems, to find any form of joy in the polit­i­cal and social cli­mate that we are cur­rent­ly sur­round­ed by. I feel that we have to crawl on our knees for our lead­ers whilst very lit­tle is being done in protest from our people.”

Eng­lish Dream pos­sess­es the angu­lar, jagged post-punk feel that the band have honed. It opens with Ben Mor­rod’s dri­ving bassline fol­lowed by Evans’ broody spo­ken word vocals. Lumer suf­fuse the track with an omi­nous ten­sion and it is beau­ti­ful­ly struc­tured, gath­er­ing pace to become a harsh plain­tive indus­tri­al-sound­ing rail against a sys­tem which expects but does­n’t deliv­er. In fact it’s the build of instru­men­ta­tion, a slow bub­ble of men­ace, that dri­ves the momen­tum of this track. 

The nihilism of the lyrics is very much an expres­sion of these par­tic­u­lar times. Any lin­ger­ing sense of punk’s shouty, vis­cer­al anger, and the hope of pro­pelling and gal­vanis­ing change is gone. In its place, Engish Dream seems to con­vey a sense of over­whelm­ing tired­ness and frus­tra­tion at a sit­u­a­tion that can­not win against a sea of wrongs. The sin­gle was record­ed with Alex Greaves at The Nave, with the mix­ing process being car­ried out by Alex Evans, with guid­ance from broth­er William Evans. 

Lumer Eng­lish Dream: release date 25th Novem­ber 2022
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