Home Counties have announced the upcoming release of their second EP, ‘In A Middle English Town’ out February 2022 via Alcopop! Records.
The news comes alongside a self-titled new track, ‘The Home Counties’.
Mixed by the band’s guitarist Conor Kearney, vocalist and guitarist Will Harrison explains: “The song ‘The Home Counties’ is set in a small town somewhere in the South of England and centres around a generic married couple and their daily existence. It is about mundanity, claustrophobia and suspicion of everything outside of the semi-detached. The characters are placeless and nondescript, emblematic of the uniformity of middle-class people across the commuter belt.”
Upcoming EP ‘Middle English Town’ follows the band’s debut EP ‘Redevelopment’ released in 2020, and 2021’s standalone singles ‘Modern Yuppies’ and ‘White Shirt / Clean Shirt’.
“Self-producing ‘Modern Yuppies’ and ‘White Shirt’ during lockdown definitely gave us time to flesh out the Home Counties sound and build a firm idea of where this project is heading next”, Harrison continues. “It was exciting to create these wacky synth-driven singles and that’s definitely something we’ve taken forward into this EP. It was always the plan to go a bit mad with those singles and then finesse the sound for the EP, reintroducing the rawer live elements and returning to the studio as a 5-piece.”
“We’re often labelled as a Bristol band but we left uni a few years ago and then found ourselves stuck in our hometown in Bucks for a year during the pandemic. The name Home Counties didn’t hold much significance when we formed, but being back here for the past 12 months made us reflect more about our sense of place here. The EP isn’t directly about our experiences – it more lives in a semi-fictitious and generalised idea of Middle England.”
The band are set to hit the road for a headline tour next February. You can check out the dates, and new track ‘The Home Counties’, below.
FEBRUARY 2022
16 Jericho Tavern, Oxford
17 Hare & Hounds 2, Birmingham
18 Castle Hotel, Manchester
19 Headrow House, Leeds
21 The Louisiana, Bristol
22 Heartbreakers, Southampton
23 Prince Albert, Brighton
24 The Lexington, London
