TOUCHY SUBJECTS
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Those lucky few who are entirely without sin can cast their stones. The rest of us should occasionally turn ours over and take a good hard look at what lies beneath.
The Mighty Handful’s Touchy Subjects shines a uncomfortable light on some dark and ugly realities about relationships – our fears, foibles and failures, our inadequacies, our exploitative appetites and unhealthy obsessions, our inability to face the truth about ourselves and the objects of our desires, and the damage we sometimes leave behind. It’s an album which showcases some discomfiting examples that demonstrate that we’re sometimes not nearly as noble, pure-hearted, honourable and virtuous in matters of love and sex as we pretend.
Thematically, Touchy Subjects is a shift from the conceptual storytelling of the band’s last album Still Sitting In Danny’s Car; lead singer and producer, Matt Howes explains – “With Still Sitting … we had a single, if rather expansive, narrative which was populated by largely sympathetic characters through whom we tried to explore issues of friendship, loss, identity, nostalgia and redemption. However, with Touchy Subjects each track is a standalone attempt to get inside the heads of a variety of subjects, some of whom perhaps deserve a modicum of pity and understanding, but almost all of whom warrant reproach on some level. Many of them just aren’t very nice people.”
The band is hugely pleased and proud that British comic art giant Mark Buckingham has provided the cover artwork – “Mark has been a good friend of ours for some time now and we’re absolutely delighted that he was able to fit this into his demanding schedule. As a band, we’d discussed a variety of concepts for what we wanted to convey visually, and Mark came up with something that captured many of our thoughts but also introduced a rather unsettling yet entirely fitting central image” says Matt Howes.
Tracklisting:
1. I Knew Your Game
2. Godawful Small Affair
3. Distant As The Stars
4. Kenneth
5. Same Old Story
6. Just You Wait
7. Good Luck Getting Laid
8. Relentless
9. For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Stars*
10. Sculptress
All tracks written by The Mighty Handful
Produced by Matt Howes and The Mighty Handful
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Matt Howes at Big Ness Studios
The Mighty Handful is –
Ralph Blackbourn – Keyboards, backing vocals
Tom Halley – Bass, backing vocals
Christopher James Harrison – Lead guitar, backing vocals, lead vocal on *
Matt Howes – lead vocals, guitar, backing vocals
Gary Mackenzie – drums, backing vocals
Cover art by Mark Buckingham