We’re At The Top is the closing track from The Battery Farm’s 2nd EP Dirty Den’s March of Suffering. It is a song about “loneliness and a song about forgotten people”. Unsurprisingly, it’s suffused with melancholy – but so heartfelt and so raw it stopped me in my tracks. It’s a beautifully paced number, commanding you to just stop what you’re doing, just hush and sit still and just absorb every despairing moment.
The Battery Farm are a Manchester outfit who describe their music as Gutter Punk but the material is actually far more nuanced. And a sense of humour – plus a sense of place – is very much in evidence. Such as the third track on Dirty Den’s March of Suffering, called I’ve Never Been To Gorton, as the lyrics tick off a list of Manchester locations, from Moss Side to Ancoats. I thought I could recall another song about a place not visited but all I could come up with was the 70s ballad: I’ve Never Been to Me, which is – something else entirely.
The band was formed in March 2019 by Ben and Dominic Corry, as “a cry of despair; a terrified and furious response to a world that rapidly seems to be going wrong“. It’s an apt song for these times.
A moving video accompanies – about family, but also about death. Made in collaboration with Trust A Fox Photography.