This week, Big Hard Excellent Fish released ‘And The Question Remains’, out now on One Little Indian. It’s their follow-up to ‘Imperfect List’, their single of 1989 which featured the band’s Josie Jones reading out a bleak 64-strong index reflecting Britain’s ills of the time, released as a single the year after and later re-recorded by the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie and remixed by Andrew Weatherall.
In 2011, with the national outlook mired in similar despondency (there’s some overlap with the older list) Jones and collaborator Ian C began work on an updated version of the track. Taking no prisoners, Jones recites her litany of problems, ranging from daily minutiae, "phone music", through the keenly-felt personal, "my broken heart", political treachery, "Dodgy Dave and the out of touch world of the Tories" and "goal-hanging Nick Clegg" to national and international afflictions, "Hillsborough", "sneaky privatisation of the NHS", "millions of our children living in poverty", "homophobia", "greedy rule-less bastard bankers" (and the truly despicable: "Jeremy ‘Wanker’ Clarkson").
We’ve been given a first look at the video for the track, a fittingly intense visual counterpart to the track’s unsparing sonics – have a watch of it above, with the audio for ‘Imperfect List’ below, and get hold of the track, which comes with remixes by Silver Bullet and Rootmasters, here.
