It feels like a long time since we last heard from Mr. Alec Bowman…now Mr. Alec Bowman_Clarke. It was in 2020 that he graced us with I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot “revealing dark depths leavened with doses of gallows humour.” It led Bob Fish to conclude that his album “suggests, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we still need to look to find a reason to believe.” Later this month (29 October) he returns with his new EP, ‘A Place Like Home’, from which you can watch the accompanying video for his first single “Deleted Scenes” below which picks up from where he left off.
In his own words…
‘Deleted Scenes’, the first single from my new EP, ‘A Place Like Home’, was the first song I wrote after my last album, ‘I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot’.
‘Deleted Scenes’ is about the search for meaning & a place in this lying, decaying late-stage capitalist nightmare of a reality we are fortunate enough to inhabit.
‘Deleted Scenes’ is a big country banger with a singalong chorus & inspiring, uplifting verses, because I love music like that. I just wanted to do what Ruston Kelly does, and I can’t because I don’t sound like him, but I can try, eh? I kid myself that the cloyingly knowing self-referentiality of the lyrics is doing a Father John Misty, a trope I’ve further milked dry by wearing a beard on the cover of the record. Every time I find myself doing things like that, I throw them away, cut them off, right away but I’m susceptible and I hate myself for it! What else can you do?
The video is made of snippets of me being a twat that I got mainly from Josienne’s iPhone. I dunno if it’s endearing or just ridiculous. It made me laugh. I was trying to make a video which didn’t make me look cool or interesting but instead showed the bits between takes where I wasn’t trying, or the failed attempts to look cool where I’m trying too hard. Since that’s sort of what the lyric is about, I thought it might suit the video. I had a play with terrible early PowerPoint style flying words to show the lyrics, which are important to me.
The overall message seems to be a humanist one – a belief in science, with an acceptance that not everything is known. Another tired trope but one that seems to me to be true, regardless of how tired it might be.
Joined by partner and singer song writer Josienne Clarke on the chorus, Deleted Scenes is so beautifully relatable, who hasn’t tried to make sense of it all? This one will draw you in and hold you. Love it!
Lyrics to ‘Deleted Scenes’
If we’re not made of more than the sum of our parts
Then there’s nothing to fight for, to tell us apart
From the soul of an animal stuck outside in the rain
So, there must be a secret, one I can’t see
A special invisible thing inside me
You’ve got one too, everyone knows that it’s there
But some of us use it to make more than just thoughts & prayers
I wanna see under the skin, between the lines of the state that we’re in
Play me all the deleted scenes, mistakes & lies & all the hidden meanings
Show me the view behind the stage door, I crawl on my knees on the cutting room floor
Filtering flaws, I’m begging for more, I just want to know what everything’s for
I know it sounds mad, to believe in a thing
That can’t be detected by measuring
One day they’ll find it and then you’ll see that I’m right
Until then, I just try to live my life in the light
I wanna see under the skin, between the lines of the state that we’re in
Play me all the deleted scenes, mistakes & lies & all the hidden meanings
Show me the view behind the stage door, I crawl on my knees on the cutting room floor
Filtering flaws, I’m begging for more, I just want to know what everything’s for
I wrote the whole thing on Josienne’s cheap baritone guitar. Josienne sings, plays wind instruments & produces. Lukas Drinkwater did everything else at his Polyphonic Sound studio in Stroud, where the Waitrose has a sushi counter. Andy Low took the cover photo. Mike Hillier mastered it. Corduroy Punk Records released it.
‘A Place Like Home’ is available to pre-order on CD, download & streaming via: ffm.to/aplacelikehome
There is also a Bandcamp exclusive, digital-only disc called ‘A Place Like Home Demos’ available here for anyone who wants to hear the tunes before we recorded them properly – https://mralecbowman.bandcamp.com/album/a-place-like-home-demos