Our Life in the Desert

My Bus are Joe Cassidy and Gary McKendry. As Butterfly Child and Papa Sprain respectively they were restless parallel adventurers in the early days of UK dream-pop. The released EPs for AR Kane’s label H.ark! and them for Rough Trade. They blazed radical trails for music, burned bright and then faded away. Now they have combined to form My Bus. Our Life In The Desert became is of the richest and most emotional dream-pop entities of any era. They combine Gary's love of dissonance and Joe's love of melody/composition. It is a deeply nostalgic record born out of love and a friendship across decades. The lyrics range from direct to oblique as the music spans oceanic drift (Moon Tempo), full-on drama (Elvis and Me), simmering poptones (Tomorrow Will Be Ours) and the stirring, multi-faceted Goose Pimples Forever, rescued by the wonders of technology from an ancient disintegrating My Bus cassette. On the exquisite, haunting Angeles, spoken words matched to one of his more restful ambient pieces. "It's an idea of confusion and uncertainty," says Gary ("Our minds contemplating the paltry limits of the conditional to my mind thoughts are only for preparing an entrance and an exit"). Our Life In The Desert is released on Onomatopoeia Records, run by Nick Bourne, a Butterfly Child fan who had previously connected with Joe on Facebook, which "completes another circle," says Joe. Likewise, Gary and Joe's decision to donate proceeds from the album to a mental health charity. Proof, then, that even in a desert, life can flourish.