London-based, Brisbane/Meanjin-born singer-songwriter MF Tomlinson releases his new single “The End Of The Road” – the third track from his upcoming second album We Are Still Wild Horses, out 17th February 2023.
‘The End Of The Road’ is a magical realist hymn for the end of the world. A paean to community and culture – celebrating the hope of humanity in the face of the hopelessness of the human race.
Inspired by his memories of the Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion protests of 2019, Tomlinson’s song plays like a vivid dream in which all ‘the people like me and you’ (those who believe in justice for human beings and the rest of the natural world) convene to enjoy the apocalypse in unison – traveling from Trafalgar Square to the bucolic vista of End Of The Road festival in Dorset, one of the last transcendent communal experiences he had before the onset of the pandemic.
Speaking more on the track’s lyrical inspiration, MF Tomlinson said: “It’s about that feeling when you just can’t believe what’s in the news – how senseless and enraging it all is. You think: How is this all happening when everyone is up in arms about it? Where are the people like me and you? That is a very lonely feeling. When you do find yourself deep in a crowd of people resonating on the same idea you feel safe, almost like you’re being held – and you feel powerful.
So this is a dream of that crowd, from isolation. Being in opposition of all of the shit that’s going on right now would seem to be an extremely unrewarding task – but yet somehow it’s not. Making generalisations is getting increasingly difficult (it’s one of the great things about our times) so it’s hard to put a finger on, but what I’m singing about, is our culture, our generation. I’m very proud to be a part of it. As well as being a protest song, this is a love letter to our culture.”
We Are Still Wild Horses stands partially as a document of the year after ‘the year everything changed’, necessitated as a way out of the “the deep sadness in the winter of 2021”. Written in the time when the days were the shortest, it speaks in the language and logic of dreams. In the dramatic sonic landscapes in which these songs unfold; a remarkable journey deep into the self is taking place.
Tomlinson says of the album: “At both ends of the album there is an abyss: one is darkness, the other is the unknown. By the time you make it from one end to the other, you find the abyss has been filled up with stars.”
Headline show on 1st March 2023 @ OSLO, London
