Details 45
This is an album about Donald Trump – his dubious rise in politics, his capricious behaviour while in office and the motley cast of characters he has surrounded himself with.
It’s not exactly a protest record, though it is shot through with anger. It’s definitely not a joke, though some of it is darkly funny. It is a tragedy and it is a farce. The songs are sung from different points of view, almost as if it’s a Donald Trump funk musical. One advisor sells Trump on the idea of a border wall. Another one feels he can’t quit because of the chaos that might follow. Rex Tillerson fumes at his plummeting status. Psychiatrists fret about the President’s mental stability. Hillary Clinton laments her loss. Trump himself brags and equivocates in his own unique, blustering style.
School of Language is David Brewis, who also makes music with his brother Peter as Field Music. This is the third School of Language album, following on from Sea From Shore in 2008 and Old Fears in 2014.
45 was written and recorded in a little less than two months during gaps in the schedule at Field Music’s studio in Sunderland. It was inspired by Bob Woodward’s book Fear, articles in the Washington Post, The New Yorker and The New York Times and by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. It was also inspired by James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, The Meters, Otis Redding and Free.
David says of the 45: “For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by US politics and that fascination became an obsession in the run up to the 2016 election. It really made me wonder as to whether I had any understanding of people whatsoever. It feels like Trump’s success has rendered in perfect detail every fault line in Western democracy – how profile beats policy, how corporate interests overwhelm the needs of ordinary people and how ethics and the rule of law are at the mercy of partisanship. To be honest, I could probably have written twice as many songs such is the wealth of scarcely believable material surrounding the Trump administration. It’s like King Lear populated by the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here in the UK, I feel far enough removed that I can turn my revulsion into satire. I don’t think I could do the same with Brexit. It’s too close.”
45 is released digitally on 30 May via Memphis Industries as a presage to Trump’s state visit to the UK in early June.