THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “U.K. troubadour Jake Bugg returns returns to his roots on his rock-driven sixth album A Modern Day Distraction — a record that turns up the noise while shining a light on the injustice he’s seen dealt to family and longtime friends.
Perhaps no song gets the point across clearer thant the bone-crunching, Beatles-via-Nirvana banger Zombieland, a rollicking ode to those who have been broken by the inescapable daily grind or trudging on with a stiff upper lip. “It’s fucking brutal,” he says of the people he’s known who exist in “a constant cycle of working to live.… They’re not paid what they’re worth. People have the same routine every day, they’re at work more than they see their kids, then the government puts the retirement age up. It’s not right.”
Produced by Metrophonic at Metrophonic Studios in London, A Modern Day Distraction, was born out of a frustration of societal inequality. Bugg found that a time had come when he just couldn’t look away. “People might say ‘What do you know?’ or ‘Just stick to music,’ ” he says. “I’ve got a bit of money, but we all know the people this affects. I was just writing it because it was the way I felt. It pisses me off — especially in a country like ours where we have the means and funds to take care of the people suffering the most, but we choose not to.”
Some 12 years and six albums since he emerged with his Mercury-nominated, chart-topping, self-titled debut, one might forget he was just 18 at the time. He’s put in the hours and achieved so much, but he’s only 30 and still seeing the front rows of his shows getting younger. In that spirit, Bugg still feels his best work is ahead of him: “You just have to put your songs out into the universe and hope for the best.”
