UK Post-Punk Innovators Modern English Release First New Album in Three Decades

Bands are like families, bound by something deeper than friendship - and liable to implode just as irrevocably. Yet that familial bond can equally draw you back, and so it is that four-fifths of the original Modern English (vocalist Robbie Grey; bassist Mick Conroy; guitarist Gary McDowell; and keyboardist Steven Walker) have recorded their first album together in thirty years, "Take Me To The Trees".

Funded by PledgeMusic and scheduled for release on February 24, 2017 via Kartel Music Group, "Take Me To The Trees" not only reconnects the band to their roots, in the fervent and fecund world of late 1970s/early 1980s post-punk Britain, but they have co-produced it with Martyn Young of Colourbox and M/A/R/R/S fame, whose last production job was 1986. In addition, the album's beautiful cover is by venerated art director Vaughan Oliver, whose very first sleeve design was Modern English's "Gathering Dust" single in 1980.

Grey, Conroy, McDowell and Walker first reunited in 2010, to tour the US, UK and Paris, before accepting an invitation to re-record their 1984 smash single "I Melt With You" for Mark Pellington's film of the same name. They hadn't seen each other in over twenty years, until they all started rehearsing for the tour. "It was like the intervening years hadn't happened," says Conroy, "and the old songs still sounded as good." After the tour, they started swapping new ideas, "some from jamming in a room, like we used to do," says Grey. "We looked at each other, just laughing. It was amazing."

As the new album finally took shape, the band toured the US again in the summer of 2016, playing their 1981 debut album, "Mesh And Lace", in its entirety, as the album was reissued by the US indie Drastic Plastic, the first time the vinyl for it had been available in the US. "It's been brilliant," says Grey. "I'm out of the loop in the modern world, but the music we used to make is fashionable again."

The band's fired-up vitality is palpable in "Take Me To The Trees" pulsating opener, and first single, "You're Corrupt", laced with Grey's rant against corporate greed, "and the throwaway nature of modern culture. It's a time when even the truth is watered down."

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