Indie acoustic-driven bliss-out
London-based indie rocker Simon Bromide (aka Simon Berridge) presents his debut solo album ‘Following The Moon’ and the lively feel-good ode-to-the-pub video for ‘The Skehans Song’, shot by Lou Smith and edited by Ben Pollard. Recorded by Brian O’Shaughnessy (Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Beth Orton), this long-player is released via Scratchy Records with distribution by Cargo Records.
Best known as the frontman of South London indie pop/power pop outfit Bromide, ‘Following The Moon’ is Simon’s first album as a solo artist. Earlier, he released the lead single ‘The Waiting Room’, along with an animated video cleverly also created by Ben Pollard.
Paying homage to one of South East London’s longest-running acoustic nights – The Easycome – a unique fixture in the South-London music scene, this song features the ‘Easy come Choir’ with Andy Hankdog, Scarlett Woolfe and Vincent Davies.
‘The Easycome’ is run by Andy Hankdog (a.k.a. Hank), whose life has been steeped in rock ‘n’ roll, starting with his father producing the 60s TV music show ‘Ready Steady Go!’. After the Sex Pistols disbanded, Hank joined Steve Jones and Paul Cook to form The Professionals, later finding success with his band Hank Dogs in the late 90s and touring America with Joan Baez. Creating a space where music can flourish, his club has hosted the likes of David Gray, Florence (Welch) Machine, Shingai (Noisettes), The Smoke Faeries, Lewis Floyd Henry, The Fat White Family and other local scenesters such as Goat Girl, Pre-Goblin, Megalash and Misty Miller.
“In the 1990s, I used to frequent the Troubadour in Earls Court. This was my introduction to the curious sport of ‘open mic-ing’. Not exactly a contact sport, but not far-off. The inevitable dread of waiting to play, the terrible acts, the amazing acts, the tap on the shoulder ‘I’m sorry, we can’t squeeze you on tonight’, the tea lights, egos and hushed silence watching pins drop and/or your life slip away and then occasionally a room full of wild unexpected applause. I remember seeing Hankdog at these nights, who always mentioned ‘The Easycome’ but it was over the other side of town in Nunhead and I never ventured over. Then time took me over to SE London and finally about 5 or 6 years ago I started going down regularly on Wednesdays,” says Simon Berridge.
“The idea for the song just appeared at the club one day when I started singing about some of the regulars.. then the chords arrived and it felt like a fun idea to write a kind of list song about these characters that went down to watch and take part. Similarly, when we came to record it we tried to capture the atmosphere of a sometimes noisy pub with this thing going on in the corner.”
The album also features drummer Fells Guilherme (Children of The Pope), bassist Ed ‘Cosmo’ Wright, multi-instrumentalists Dave Hale, Dimitri Ntontis and Stephen Elwell, folk-pop chanteuse Katy Carr on piano and Terry Edwards (Nick Cave, Tom Waits, P.J.Harvey) on trumpet. Scottish singer Julie Anne McCambridge joins Simon on the William Blake penned ‘Earth’s Answer’.
This is Berridge’s first output since Bromide’s ‘Ancient Rome’ and ‘I’ll Never Learn’ singles, both released in 2020. Their most recent album ‘I Woke Up’, with singles ‘Magic Coins’ and ‘Two Song Slot’, was met with popular acclaim, receiving positive reviews and airplay in dozens of countries. Since founding Bromide in 1996, the band has released six albums via London-based Scratchy Records.
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