The Subways: A Critique Of The World And It’s Ways
It doesn’t take a genius to state that eight years is a long time. Within that timeframe the majority of us will have gone through major life milestones, we will have all witnessed a few historical events, and it’s a guarantee that you’ll have changed as a person one way or another. So with all that considered, it’s a huge risk for an artist to take that time in releasing another record, either the hype lives up and they release something incredible or it ends up being a career-killing move. Luckily for THE SUBWAYS and their latest record Uncertain Joys, they don’t fall into the latter. More than anything, it gave them all the time they needed to work on their craft.
Now part of the wait was due to the all too familiar story of lockdown, but what about the few years before? Well frontman, Billy Lunn, decided to take time out to undertake an English degree at Cambridge University, during which time he wrote out lyrics and ideas for the album as he studied in his dorm room. An interesting environment to be writing in but what was more integral was the strange events happening in the world. Billy thought back on this time, “in 2016, when I was starting university, and I was toying around with fresh ideas for Uncertain Joys, Brexit had happened and then Donald Trump was elected in the US, and then DAVID BOWIE died! It felt like the universe was in an accelerated entropy, and we were just going to have to ride it out and watch everything collapse around us.”
“There was a lingering sense of despair at the time, and I think those elements of, like, an expected sense of loss was imbued in the record. Such as in tracks like Joli Coeur and Lavendar Amelie, which are the slower, more melancholic songs, that have their own very specific subject matters, but you can hear in the minor keys of the songs that there is a real sadness going on there.”
The new record from THE SUBWAYS is actually split in two, with the first half covering subject matter related to love and relationships and then the second half being a commentary and criticism of societal ills. On the outside it might appear to be a deliberate choice, but the reality is more of a happy accident that worked out for the best. “It was really a month or two afterwards (tracklisting Uncertain Joys) that I noticed that I had stuck all of the songs with interior subject matters towards the front end of the record and the songs that dealt with the more exterior, social-minded matters was the back end of the record. I think unconsciously my brain just wanted them to breathe properly and for the album to have a two-sided feel to it, like a cassette with a side A and a side B.”
As for the subject matter itself, it’s established, more for the second half, that worldwide events helped to inspire the lyrics, but some tracks are more personal to Billy than one might realise. Two of the tracks, Swanky Al and The Devil And Me, tell a story in two parts about men, what society expects of them and what “lessons” they’re taught growing up. Billy broke it down, “they are both songs about myself. Swanky Al is about we as frontmen, how we present ourselves, the mythology upon how we build our persona. The Devil And Me is about me as a young boy growing up in a patriarchal society and the expectations placed upon young men, and the excuses we are given to ‘go off and play’ whereas young girls are expected to be ‘prissy’. So, you have these gender and sexual stereotypes that I now, as I approach my forties, find to be problematic environments in which to grow up and they caused me turmoil. I came out as bisexual when I was 36, and there’s a reason for that, due to exterior factors that made me feel like I shouldn’t explore that and shouldn’t be pronounced.”
With all that said, how does it feel to finally have the record out for THE SUBWAYS? “I feel a huge amount of relief! It has been a long time, we know that and we apologise for that! But we’re just so pleased now that everyone has access to the album and that we get to tour it. The things we really made sure of, and this is one of the reasons why it was delayed, we didn’t want to release the album until we knew we could perform it. We’re a live touring band, we love being on stage, we love getting on the tour bus, going to new towns, new cities, new countries, new cultures, meeting fantastic new people and presenting the album that way.”
Uncertain Joys is out now via Alcopop! Records.
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