albums

• Mark Colton – Vocals
• Tim Birrell – Guitar
• Mike Varty – Keyboards & Backing Vocals
• Jim Murdoch – Bass & Backing Vocals
• Gerald ‘Mully’ Mulligan – Drums

• Additional backing vocals by Lawrence Colton & Sam Collins
• Flute on Fool’s Paradise by Claire Kennedy

Credo’s fourth studio album – WE THE DISCONNECTED – is their first release in 15 years, and takes them to a whole new level. Delivering an intimate portrait of a fractured world, this is Credo at their most compelling best, with soaring musicianship, unforgettable melodies and the deeply personal reflections of angry not-so-young men on our place in an ever-changing, and increasingly baffling, world.

In a world that preaches mindfulness and understanding, a workplace culture still exists where HR departments focus on minimising the financial risk to a business rather than the wellbeing of an individual/employee. Where employers knowingly apply unacceptable pressure through workload, and unreasonable behaviour towards employees, hoping to make them leave, then replace them with yet more, mostly younger and less experienced and capable ‘fodder’, very obviously cheaper than their predecessors. It’s the Somme for the Gens X and Millennials, as over the top they go into burnout, mental illness, suicide or other life-changing outcomes.

Yet still the instigators are applauded and rewarded, hit their bonus targets and leave organisations before becoming accountable for their specific actions, with huge bonuses. Where failure for the top brass means a huge payout, and new jobs land with ease, with no thought for the carnage they have left behind.

Originally inspired by the lunacy of life on the road, daily checking into hotels, going to the restaurant and requesting a ‘Table for One’ and listening every morning and evening to the trials and tribulations of others, playing out their own dramas against the background of fragile mental health and the ‘prozac generation’.

Trying every day to meet the expectations of others, distanced from the reality of what my world had become, clouded by prescription drugs and driven by the unreal ambitions of social media, when circumstances, luck, and the lottery of perception rather than reality, ability and delivery, hold the key to your final position in that race.

The incomprehensible continuing re-occurrence of mass fatal school shootings in the United States, without meaningful action to reduce or prevent them. The idiotic prioritisation of gun ownership over children’s lives illustrates what a sad race we have become.

Having spent half a lifetime clocking up unnecessary miles on the rapidly deteriorating roads in the UK, where mile after mile you only become numb to the ongoing trail of orange road cones and red taillights, automatically dimming headlights blinding you from the opposite direction. And the only relief is the colour represented by the sadness manifested in floral tributes to people who have lost their lives at that location.

Then the realisation that you are recognising the pain and desperation that those memorials represent remains forever.

Yet as the flowers age and the colours bleed away, the soft toys become grimy from the exhaust fumes of a million drivers who don’t even recognise these memorials for what they are, and continue to drive badly, unburdened by the lack of traffic police, and speed calming measures that don’t work.

Still the sadness lingers on, and never changes for the bereaved. And the living hell that remains for the survivors, sentenced to forever remember what happened.

Presidential or General Elections and the lack of understanding exhibited by the electorate of what they are voting for. Personality and soundbites, three-word slogans. Dishonesty and barefaced lying has become legitimised by the behaviour of our elected leaders. A wilful neglect of truth by politicans repeatedly lying, and smirking as they do so at voters who still vote for them, fed lies by press barons who don’t even pay taxes.

Only a bit bonkers. Aren’t we all…?

21st Century Britain, cocaine rife in parliament, ice Cream vans selling drugs outside school gates, a generation who hasn’t slept without being anaesthetised by drugs or alcohol for years. Weapons on the streets, gang stabbings, shops looted, people murdered, ambulance, police and firefighters stoned as they try to help. The victims are everybody. And in the background the fear that what we are leaving for our children and their children is rotten to the core.

But every so often you get reminded of how beautiful the simplest interaction with nature or other people can be…

“A lyric and idea that I have tried to realise in songs before, but never really achieving. Maybe I have this time.” Mark Colton

It’s about doing everything your parents and society have demanded of you, working 40+ years like a dog before realising you aren’t fulfilled and that you have been lied to by everyone you should be able to trust.

And then a single act of spite from a trusted colleague sends everything you believed to be true, and everything you’ve ever worked for, into a complete spiral. Where now, even the most basic decision, answering yes or no, or turning left or right at the end of the street, can change everything.