Past, Present, Future

Past, Present, Future features songs from Simon Bonney’s last two albums, Forever (1992) and Everyman (1994), as well as six unreleased tracks, including his cover of Scott Walker’s Duchess.

In 1992, with Crime And The City Solution on hiatus, Simon moved to the US on an impulse, stayed for a decade and released two records; the much loved and very personal Forever and the socio-political Everyman, a record that has grown in relevance as rapid change and social dislocation has increased.

In imagining the perfect soundtrack to these observations, he turned to the melancholy and plaintive sounds of dobro and lap steel of 1970s country music, the sound of longing for the familiar, for security and stability, songs about family and belonging, memories of a childhood farm in Tasmania. The result was two country tinged, compassionate and prescient portraits of life in late 20th Century America through Tasmanian eyes.

His path led him into outback Australia, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh - a life rich in extremes of colour and conflict, of trauma, of humanity and inhumanity, of power and powerlessness. It was not always easy to witness and eventually, as happens with all that walk this road, he had seen too much and it was time to stop. It was time to re-embrace something simple, something personal - his music. He pulled tapes from shoeboxes and listened to the old albums as well as tracks recorded for an unreleased album, Eyes Of Blue, recorded in Detroit with a band featuring Matt Smith (Outrageous Cherry, the Volbeats), Troy Gregory (the Dirtbombs, Electric Six, Killing Joke) and a guest appearance by Chuck Prophet and found that, far from sounding nostalgic, they sounded fresh and every bit as relevant - if not more relevant - than when he had recorded them.

LP - Gold Vinyl with Download.