Martin Carr’s new single ‘Gold Lift’ isn’t out until Friday, but on this, the long-fated ‘Brexit day’ on which Britain formally begins the departing process, the former Boo Radleys frontman has shared the video exclusively with tQ, streaming above.
The track, released by Sonny Boy Records, was inspired by that photo of the Donald Trump and Nigel Farage stood smugly grinning outside the latter’s elevator following his election win, with Carr’s writing spurred further by the Daily Mail’s condemnation of High Court judges as ‘traitors’ after their slowing of Article 50.
The politically charged video was directed by Mark James, and is the first of a series of spontaneous releases planned by Carr this year. His third solo album New Shapes Of Life is also due this year, via Tapete Records.
"When I wrote ‘Gold Lift’, I was thinking about the concepts of perception, distraction and fundamentalism," Carr says. "Fundamentalists use perception in an attempt to distract us from reality. The far right, the hard left, extremists of all stripes, are vying for our attention, hawking their chaos. There are billions dispossessed, uncared for and unloved. They need love and support, but are given demagogues, false idols, wolves grinning from golden walls.
"It got me thinking about a William Blake verse: ‘The hand of Vengeance found the Bed/To which the Purple Tyrant fled/The iron hand crushd the Tyrants head/And became a Tyrant in his stead.’
"And it got me thinking about a Bob Dylan verse: ‘Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.’
"Hitler’s bass player, Joseph Goebbels, also had some prescient lyrics: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.’"
