With each release, Home Counties continue to refashion their sound. Following their first two EPs — which were full to the brim with heavy riffs and intense spoken-word evoking the likes of Pavement and La Dispute — the group goes light on the punk and heavy on the pop in their newest single “Bethnal Green”. “Oh you won’t like this, it’s just some crap pop thing I’ve come up with’,” songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Will Harrison declared to his bandmates. “But then immediately everyone was into it. It felt good that we could do this sort of song; it really opened up what was ‘acceptable’.”
Meditating on Bethnal Green, the East End neighbourhood the six-piece newly call home in a shared band flat, blunt, declarative lyrics explore what it means when a town changes, and whether that change is welcome or detrimental. Using similar themes of neighbourhoods and normalcy they’ve explored on previous releases, there’s a slight tweak in perspective on “Bethnal Green”. The band explains the track is “the experience of being an active participant in the gentrification of an area, and the conflicting feelings of guilt that come with trying to justify your presence there.” Take the line “Went to Bethnal Green postal code / Got too gentrified and it lost its soul, oh no” — a dilemma faced by city dwellers everywhere.
