The Four Fathers Release New Album, ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, on CD and as a Download

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I’m delighted to announce the release, on Bandcamp, of ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, the new album by The Four Fathers, marking ten years of our existence as a south London-based band playing mostly original folky, rocky, reggae-inflected protest music.

The album, our third, and a belated follow-up to our second album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’, released in November 2017, was recorded, sporadically, over the last six years, in sessions in July 2018, December 2019, July 2022 and January 2024, with the great Charlie Hart, a multi-instrumentalist and producer, best-known as a member of Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance in the 1970s and ‘80s, who also plays electric piano and accordion on three of the songs. Do check out Charlie’s work if you don’t know it, as he is currently involved in two very worthwhile musical projects — the Equators, an epic collective of talented players of African-tinged jazz and r’n’b, and a revival of Slim Chance, mostly featuring musicians who played with Ronnie in the band’s bucolic heyday, following Ronnie’s exodus from the excess of the Faces.

The long genesis of the album was caused by personnel changes, the huge disruption of Covid in 2021 and 2022, and the difficulty of getting everyone together to rehearse, and, most specifically, to work on arrangements of the songs in the gaps between work commitments and, more recently, the kinds of family illnesses that begin to afflict those of us in our 50s and 60s with ageing parents.

Listen to the album — and/or buy it — here!

‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’ features ten original songs — nine by myself, and one by our guitarist Richard Clare — and it covers tumultuous events in the UK and globally over the last eight years, including the existential threat to humanity posed by climate collapse, as highlighted in two of the songs, and reflected in the striking cover image by our drummer Bren, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Brexit referendum, the anti-gentrification Tidemill garden occupation in Deptford, the ongoing plight of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners“, and the unjust imprisonment of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.

Most of these songs have previously been released as online singles, as and when they were recorded, although two of them are new — the opener, ‘All About Love’, a buoyant eco-song of mine, and Richard’s song ‘When You’re Gone’, one of two non-protest songs on the album that might best be filed as existential meditations (the other being ‘The Wheel of Life’).

However, we hope that the whole package is worth listening to in its entirety, as it has a mellow, understated vibe throughout (not even disrupted by the brief manic energy of its one punky number, ‘Affordable‘), and it’s a tribute to Charlie that he coaxed some sensitive performances from us, and gave the whole collection of songs a lovely organic feel.

Bandcamp describes itself with some accuracy, as “an online record store and music community where passionate fans discover, connect with, and directly support the artists they love”, and we’re pleased to be part of it, and not part of the streaming business that offers pitiful returns to all but the most successful artists.

You can listen to all our music for free, although it is, of course, helpful if you buy our albums, or individual songs, as downloads, or as CDs, which can be shipped anywhere around the world, and which include not just ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’ and ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’, but also our first album, ‘Love and War’, which, we’re surprised to discover, was released almost exactly nine years ago.

We also hope to be able to be able to announce soon a launch gig for the album somewhere in south east London. Stay tuned!

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.