Home Counties release new single 'You Break It, You Bought It', a hook-filled, grin-inducing, pointed address of renting in London.
The track is the latest taster of the band’s highly anticipated debut album Exactly As It Seems, out May 3 via Submarine Cat Records. ‘You Break It, You Bought It’ follows last month’s ‘Uptight’, the expansive, shape-shifting ‘Wild Guess’ and their glitchy ode to east London ‘Bethnal Green’.
A staple of the band’s live show since 2022 and already a firm fan-favourite, on new single ‘You Break It, You Bought It’ vocalist Lois Kelly’s sharp-witted quips on the state of renting in London dart between intricate, zesty guitar work and funk-laced bass lines, further expanding on the band’s hook-filled, grin-inducing dance-punk. The track is accompanied by an animated visualiser created by Theo Polyzoides (King Nun).
Listen to ‘You Break It, You Bought It’ by Home Counties on the Shoot Music New Releases Playlist on Spotify.
Speaking more on the single, vocalist/guitarist Will Harrison said: “Having lived for years in shoddy flats, and having recently moved to the extortionately priced area of East London, we focused on our experience of renting. The song talks about landlords’ refusal to improve conditions for their tenants and their eagerness to evict anyone threatening high profit margins. In response, it encourages petty actions as if revolutionary behaviour: lose your keys, make blu tack stains, refuse to use coasters, don’t empty the toaster tray. In this way, it reflects the shift in lyricism on this album away from detached political commentary to using more mundane lived experiences of daily life, whilst still reflecting upon wider social issues.”
When disenchantment runs high, when city life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — when you’re forking out seven quid for a pint, shivering in a queue for a club night you don’t really care about, getting ripped off by landlords over blu tac stains, and squeezing in studio sessions around a relentless 9-5 schedule, there is only one logical response: fun.
Produced in its entirety by the band’s guitarist Conor Kearney, the band recorded Exactly As It Seems in a small studio in Hackney where they convened every evening after work for months on end, “all six of us crowded in like sardines”, as vocalist and guitarist Will Harrison recalls.
The resulting body of work – mixed by the renowned Andy Savours (Black Country New Road, Róisín Murphy, The Kills) – dutifully captures the band’s rapturous live performances; a fizzing display of eclecticism all with a focus on melody in its purest form. The band have always excelled at poking at life’s mundanities, but this time they supply the humdrum with some enormous pop hooks.
Drawing on a swathe of broad-ranging influences, early 2000s pop, the “dopamine overload” of Confidence Man’s live shows, to LCD Soundsystem, The Slits, and the nuanced art-rock of ‘Remain In Light’/’Speaking In Tongues’-era Talking Heads; on Exactly As It Seems, Home Counties – Will Harrison (vocals/guitar/keys), Lois Kelly (vocals/keys), Conor Kearney (guitar/vocals), Dan Hearn (drums), Barn Peiser Pepin (synth/percussion/guitar/vocals) and Bill Griffin (bass/vocals) – unanimously lean into a fun, exploratory way of thinking.
