From the first listen, I was hooked. The spoken-word passages and lyrics pull you in, and the music has a distinctive edge that stands out across genres. The album chronicles a week in the life of an artist navigating London, with each track capturing a single day.
At the heart of the project is vocalist Bruce Breakey, a sharp-eyed storyteller who finds grit and grace in the daily grind, turning small moments into lines that sting, soothe, and stick. Around that voice, Simon Kuzmickas conducts the multi‑instrumental uproar, folding indie hooks, drum’n’bass rushes, ska bounce, and garage‑bred grooves into a kinetic sound that feels hand‑built and unmistakably theirs. The songs feint and swing – beats that snap, melodies that jangle, spaces that breathe – yet everything lands with purpose.
The result is a record that laughs to keep from crying: funny, unvarnished, and disarmingly true. It moves from sweat-slick dance floors to 3 a.m. quiet without losing the thread, stitching humour to heartbreak until they feel like two sides of the same story. Each track arrives like a vignette – verses that confide, choruses that burst – proof that when grit meets grace, the real hits harder.
Song by Song
- “Full Circle” (Wednesday: The Parking Ticket)
It starts with something tiny and infuriating: a ticket under the wiper that turns the whole week into a mirror. The UKG-tinged shuffle and clipped, percussive vocal lines loop like a thought you can’t shake, pairing everyday irritation with a bigger question about routine and repeat behaviour. Little production details – rubbery bass, skittering hi-hats, a sample that seems to fold back on itself – underline the theme of cycles. It’s grounded and slyly funny, yes, but there’s a prickle of unease too: how many times have we stood here before, promising we’ll change?
- “The Café” (Thursday: The Ex)
Breakup weather: lukewarm mug, window fogged, time moving at half speed. The arrangement pulls almost everything away – slide guitar in slow bloom, brushed percussion, negative space – so Bruce’s conversational delivery feels like it’s happening right across the table. You can hear the tremor of restraint: what’s unsaid crowds the room as much as any string section could. It’s beautifully uneasy, the sound of stubbornly staying put while your heart tries to leave without you.
- “You Don’t Know Me” (feat. Fredwave) (Friday: The Show)
Friday opens the throttle. Sub-bass pressure, a nervous sparkle of synths, and drums that kick like stage lights coming up all at once – this is the high you chase when you walk on. Fredwave threads in and out with a voice that brings both grit and glass, setting up a charged, call-and-response tension. Lyrically it’s all mirrors and profiles: who you are in the crowd, on the screen, in the split second between verses. The performance swagger is real, but the question lingers – how much of the costume is still on when the music stops?
- “White Men” (Saturday: The Blackout)
Then the wheels come off. Guitars saw and flare, the drums sprint, and the whole track leans into confrontation like a shoulder in a packed doorway. It’s the soundtrack to a night that accelerates past sense – strobe memories, sharp elbows, flashes of anger you only half recognize in the morning. There’s politics humming through the distortion too, a critique shouted over feedback: privilege, oblivion, the luxury of not remembering what your noise does to a room. The relentlessness is the point; chaos is a character.
- “I Forgot” (Sunday: The Bottom)
The comedown isn’t quiet by accident – it’s quiet because there’s nothing left. Piano takes the lead, each note landing with the weight of an admission, reverb hanging like breath in freezing air. Bruce’s vocal thins to something raw and human, recounting missing hours, missed calls, the shame of making excuses to yourself. It hurts without melodrama, choosing clarity over spectacle, and in that choice, you hear a kind of courage: naming the fog is the first step to walking out of it.
- “Beautiful Boy” (Monday: The Phone Call)
A small light creeps in at the edges and then, almost shyly, the room brightens. Warm chords, a springy groove, harmonies that feel like open curtains – all of it arranged to make space for a conversation that matters. The song holds the small miracle of reconnection: a voice you needed at exactly the right time, the steadying handrail of being known. It doesn’t pretend everything’s fixed; it just let’s hope back in, one bar at a time.
- “This Time Next Year We’ll Be Millionaires” (Tuesday: The Start)
The loop closes with chin-up defiance, not a parade. Breakbeat energy nicks at indie-pop hooks, turning resolve into something you can dance to while you pick yourself up. It’s about choosing the next beginning on purpose, about refusing to let last week set the terms for this one. Bruce lands one of his most quotable lines: “You can always rewind the tape and record over the bad bits – but that’s madness, man. The rough makes the smooth.” By the fade, you feel the title less like bravado and more like a promise to keep moving – even if the circle brings you back, you’ll be a different person when you arrive.
The album unfolds over seven tracks, each one loosely aligned with a day of the week, charting the emotional weather of an artist navigating London’s relentless pace. It’s a story of survival in a city that never pauses late-night trains, frayed nerves, brief romances, and the stubborn will to keep going. As a debut, it hits hard – confident, cohesive, and brimming with personality.
There’s a lived-in intimacy to the songwriting that makes the highs feel earned and the lows disarmingly honest. You Don’t Know Me stands out for its quiet defiance – a clear-eyed refusal to be reduced to anyone else’s version of who the artist is. I Forgot captures the fog of heartbreak with a sharp hook and a lingering afterglow, like replaying a conversation you wish had ended differently. Beautiful Boy is the gem: tender but unsentimental, it holds space for vulnerability without ever tipping into melodrama.
Across the record, the production is crisp and purposeful. Beats land with weight but leave room to breathe; vocals sit forward without crowding the mix; textures drift in and out like passing scenes through a bus window. The sequencing guides you from the grind of early week resolve to the weekend’s fragile release, sketching a full arc without feeling over-plotted.
It’s the kind of album that rewards a focused listen and then keeps calling you back. There’s heart, craft, and a clear voice at the centre of it all. If you’re in the mood for something honest, finely mixed, and quietly compelling, give this debut a spin – you may be surprised by how much it stays with you.
Review by James Edmond
