Two Songs About Buses

Those Unfortunates are a four-piece band based in London. This is their first release for Gare Du Nord Records.

Two Songs About Buses is a concept single; both songs are inspired by Seeing Red, a BBC documentary filmed at the London Buses depot in Westbourne Park on the eve of the 1992 General Election.

Lead track John Cronin is Unwell celebrates an unlikely folk hero – a reluctant non-conformist whose refusal to follow either timetables or uniform regulations marks him out to management as a born troublemaker. Featuring a standout solo from guitarist Henry Bird and a mini Mexican standoff at its heart, the song is puckish beat-pop at its most infectious.

Lofty and Eastman is a sumptuous waltz out of time, with the band doffing their collective cap to the classic songbook, as well as the maintenance men of the song's title. It's a tender little number about the quiet of the nightshift, the slow burning warmth of friendship and the moments when you wish you could "hold back the sun from the moon."

Two Songs About Buses was recorded live at NWfA studios in Sussex in late 2017, with producer/engineer Thomas Hatfield. It features the band's first new songs since the sessions for acclaimed debut album Nothing Isn't Beautiful.

BBC 6Music's Gideon Coe described single The Café at Golders Green as "Just beautiful," while a four-star review in Shindig! praised "a charming narrative of a small but meaningful life." The album also received accolades from 6Music's Jon Hillcock, and was dubbed "an album of the year" by the blog, When You Motor Away, and "one of my favourites of the year so far" by Eardrums Music.

Previous single releases received repeat airplay on BBC 6Music from DJs Steve Lamacq, Gideon Coe and Tom Robinson, who described them as "daft and irresistible….[with] the lightness of touch and complete assurance found among all genuine Great British Eccentrics."

Since forming in 2013, the band have hosted a festival of music and literature celebrating forgotten and lost London, shared a stage with a socialist magician, and played the last ever gig at the (squatted) 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street before the police moved in. They will release another concept single, Two Songs About Football in May 2018; their second album, a collection of songs about the soon-to-be demolished Woodberry Down housing estate in North London, will follow.