Ears Wide Open: The Micawbers

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The Micawbers (Photo by Michelle Shiers)

The Micawbers are a British-American rock trio dealing in muscular, grinding indie-blues with pugilistic lyrics that land well-aimed body blows to societal malignancies. Their disgust is palpable; how they vent it is invigorating.

Named for a comic character in “David Copperfield,” the band — Adam Chamberlain (.Sub), Ed Shiers (The Peach Kings, The Small Hours) and John Bennett (The Icarus Line, The Small Hours) — calls its forthcoming debut album, titled “Aim Low. Get Sold,” “an angry manifesto frustrated with a post-intellectual society that is more focused on celebrity and popularity than truth and progress.” In short, a reaction to your social media feeds on most days, or in their words, “angry music for angry people.”

The Micawbers only released their debut single in late March, and their second last week. But reacting to the events in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, they quickly released their third over the weekend. “Get Ready for the Recoil” is a corrosive activist anthem with a time-honored call to action. “We wrote this song over two years ago in response to what we saw was a wave of radicalization across America and Europe,” the trio says. “In light of current events, we felt it necessary to say how we feel in the best way we know, through our music. Hold their feet to the fire. Vote.”

“Hail, Hail, Hallejuah!” lambastes, among other things, religious obsession and arrives with heavily ironic gospel backing vocals. And their first single “Delete, Repackage, Ship, On-Time” draws inspiration from psychologist/author B.F. Skinner’s claim that all human choices and actions are mere response to environment — that self-determinism is a fallacy. Shiers directs the video.

||| Stream: “Get Ready for the Recoil” and “Hail, Hail, Hallelujah!”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Delete, Repackage, Ship, On-Time”