Martha

"Martha’s previous work sounds like the lovechild of Los Campesinos! and Blink-182, and thankfully, that spirit is kept in the new track, too."
The Fader

"Cuts the weight of austerity with good-natured humour and a catchy sing-along melody"
Pitchfork

"Enthralling and multi-faceted"
The Line of Best Fit

"Grab yourself a bowl, throw in a cup of Belle and Sebastian’s lyricism, a dash of The Smiths’ kitchen sink realism, sprinkle some smouldering J Mascis riffs and you’ll get something close to Martha."
CLASH
 
"Evocative, character-driven songs with killer hooks and radical politics”
Rolling Stone
 

Today, Durham indiepop-punks Martha have shared furious new single 'Hope Gets Harder', a song about England. The track is the third track to be taken from the band's forthcoming album Please Don’t Take Me Back out 28^th October on Specialist Subject Records. 
 
Talking about the new track, Martha said: “‘Hope Gets Harder’ is a song about England: a uniquely fucking terrible idea. A place governed by the most absurdly mediocre people in history. Selfish, rich, thick, malevolent ghouls propped up by a bootlicking, self-congratulating, stenographic, client-journalist news media that puts North Korea to shame. England is a grey, damp artifice, vibrating to a quasi-fascist background hum, where the majority live miserable hopeless lives, so that a tiny minority can live in extravagant luxury. As we lurch violently from one crisis to the next, it feels like the light of any hope for the future is slowly dying. But we have to try and find hope in one another, and together we have to fight like hell for a more socially and ecologically just world. No fate but what we make for ourselves. Abolish england. Fuck the king.”  
 
While their previous record - 2019’s Love Keeps Kicking - saw them remaining defiant in a world that seemed to be breaking apart, new album Please Don’t Take Me Back explores the scattered fragments of what followed and tries to make sense of how we navigate the smoking remains. The record also sees Martha joining forces with Bristol-based Specialist Subject Records for the first time since their split 7” with Radiator Hospital back in 2015.
 
First formed in the small village of Pity Me, Durham, in 2011, Martha released their debut EP the following year on guitarist Jonathan Cairns’ DIY label, Discount Horse. Tours on both sides of the Atlantic soon followed, along with two albums for the UK’s much missed indie pop stable Fortuna Pop: 2014’s Courting Strong (also released in the United States by Salinas Records) and 2016’s sophomore effort Blisters In The Pit of My Heart (via Dirtnap Records in the US). In the meantime, the band became figureheads for the UK’s DIY pop scene by balancing their obvious talents with a clear set of ethics - anti-capitalist, first and foremost - and an open-hearted warmth that’s often absent from the foreground of punk rock.
 
Please Don’t Take Me Back is a fine addition to Martha’s discography; their most life-affirming yet and a welcome ripple of light at a time when it’s often difficult to see past the darkness. Listen and love: the beat perpetual drives on.