Bristol-based quintet Home Counties have returned with new single ‘White Shirt / Clean Shirt’. Sipping their distinct cocktail of 80s alt-synth complete with wry jabs at socio-economics, ‘White Shirt / Clean Shirt’ comprehends the youthful fear of recalibration post-covid. With their first releases coming after March 2020, Home Counties have come to serve as an escape from the trappings of lockdowns and an unfamiliar world. Ceaselessly removing the listener from the unforgiving realities of 2020, theirs was a place where your senses oscillated and the comedown never caught you. But with the end date looking less like a mirage and more like a possibility, we’re to see a new side to Home Counties.
“White Shirt looks at the less aspirational, and more universal reality of office work. It voices that feeling of losing your sense of self and place as you go into work, dressed uniformly in a Next suit, in an indistinguishable space, staring at another spreadsheet”.
Unlike the hypnotic ‘Dad Bod’, nor the Buoyant ‘Modern Yuppies’, ‘White Shirt / Clean Shirt’ is a calculated and composed moment in Home Counties’ catalogue. Previous singles have seen the band relentless in approach, powering ahead with a foot firmly planted; An A to B experience. Conversely, ‘White Shirt / Clean Shirt’ features segments of breathing space, giving moments of depth and reflection that sit awkwardly but purposefully between playful and indulgent instrumentals. After being robbed of a formative year, Britain’s youth will consider their furlough money-wagon a blessing rather than a mere symptom of their troubles. Home Counties are the same. Coming to terms with the terror of conformity, salvaging sanity in the drive time abyss and the 9-5; theirs is a fear that we’ll all have to deal with.
Listen to ‘White Shirt/Clean Shirt’ here:
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