‘No one cares what came before, They stripped it of its very core, Now people they can’t tell what the hell they moved here for’ (Ain’t What It Used To Be)

Peace de Résistance is the solo project of Institute’s Moses Brown and Lullaby For The Debris, his second album, following on from 2022’s debut, Bits And Pieces.  The fundamentals that made Bits And Pieces such a memorable record remain firmly in place.  The starting point is Brown’s love of Zamrock (a 1970s’ fusion of traditional Zambian polyrhythms with more contemporary heavy rock instrumentation), which he has then reconnected with swaggering glam rock and reimagined through his own DIY punk sensibility.

But at the same time, progression is equally clear.  The overriding aesthetic is, perhaps, more refined, less determinedly lo-fi.  The songs energetically crafted, quietly infectious.  From the shimmering riff that defines opener You Are Absurd to the noir-tinged The Funny Man, from the wildly skittering piano flourish that kicks off the rollicking Fast Money, to the plaintive brass of the title track, this is an album rich in detail and texture.

Brown’s vocal delivery remains a languorous drawl that belies an anger robustly rooted in exploring class consciousness through the modern nexus of low pay, urban dispossession of the working class, and the wider rentier economy.  The strutting 40 Times The Rent examines housing insecurity (‘The ground’s unstable, when homes aren’t purchasable’) and Ain’t What It Used To Be how our cities are frequently hollowed out at the behest of real estate capital, while Pay Us More bluntly decries the exploitation at the heart of the economic system (‘It’s time that working full time made you a living’).

And, throughout, the album is bleakly cognisant of just how embedded the status quo remains.  Coddle The Rich recognises our own complicity (‘The compromises that you’ve made for pay checks and the duplex that you pay for’) and Fast Money a system geared to protecting privileged interests (‘You took the handout and where does it go? Bonuses, not me and Joe’).  The title track delivers a ruminative finale that fears that change will never come (‘Left in the wake of recklessness and greed, She said, “It’s fine monsieur, why change anything?”’).