Jake Bugg – A Modern Day Distraction (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 39:51 minutes | 483 MB | Genre: Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA Records Label
Announced today (May 17), the new project will mark the sixth studio album from the indie singer, and arrives fresh off the back of Bugg completing a tour with Britpop legends Liam Gallagher and John Squire.
It is set to arrive on September 20 via RCA, and will be the singer, songwriter and guitarist’s first full-length LP since he shared ‘Saturday Night Sunday Morning’ back in 2021.
To celebrate the announcement, Bugg has today shared a new teaser of the album – dropping the intense new single ‘Zombieland’.
The track comes as a gritty, guitar-driven anthem, and sees Bugg pay homage to rock icons like Nirvana in his sound, while the lyrics highlight the struggle of those feeling broken by the inescapable daily grind. “She’s waking up still half-asleep, outside the street lights flicker/ He likes to smoke before he leaves another day without a dream/ He works his fingers to the bone just to feed the metre,” he sings in the bone-crunching intro, before erupting into the anthemic chorus. “Around and round it goes again/ Every day just looks the same.”
English singer and songwriter Jake Bugg embraces the twangy, literate, ’60s-inspired pop/rock of his best work on 2024’s A Modern Day Distraction. Having emerged to critical acclaim in 2012 and garnering early comparisons to artists like Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg with his folk and blues songs, Bugg (who was 18 when he released his eponymous debut) has explored an array of sounds, flirting with Rolling Stones-esque grooves on On My One and AM pop on 2017’s Hearts That Strain, while 2021’s Saturday Night, Sunday Morning showcased a chart-friendly mainstream alt rock vibe. Produced at Metrophonic studios in London, A Modern Day Distraction is easily his most stylistically cohesive album, an almost perfect balance of all his influences funneled through a vintage-inspired, ’60s rock lens. Cuts like “Zombieland,” “All Kinds of People,” and “Waiting for the World” are big, crunchy tube amp guitar rockers that balance the classic influence of the Beatles and David Bowie with the punk intensity of contemporaries like Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane. Elsewhere, he draws swaggering inspiration from Oasis on “Never Said Goodbye” and evokes the bittersweet piano balladry of Gilbert O’Sullivan on “All that I Needed Was You.” While these are hooky songs, there’s also a sense that Bugg has deeper thoughts on his mind — about social inequities and the crush of capitalism on the average working person, who, as Bugg sings, “works his fingers to the bone/Just to feed the meter/And it’s so dark when he gets home.” With A Modern Day Distraction, Bugg further establishes his reputation as a modern-day British rock troubadour. – Matt Collar
Tracklist:
1. Jake Bugg – Zombieland (02:42)
2. Jake Bugg – All Kinds Of People (02:47)
3. Jake Bugg – Breakout (02:31)
4. Jake Bugg – Never Said Goodbye (03:38)
5. Jake Bugg – I Wrote The Book (03:15)
6. Jake Bugg – Waiting For The World (02:42)
7. Jake Bugg – Instant Satisfaction (03:25)
8. Jake Bugg – Got To Let You Go (03:14)
9. Jake Bugg – All That I Needed Was You (03:17)
10. Jake Bugg – Keep on Moving (02:51)
11. Jake Bugg – Beyond The Horizon (04:12)
12. Jake Bugg – Still Got Time (05:11)
