Under The Bridge 2: Sarah Records Bands Reunited

Under The Bridge 2 is the sequel to the celebrated 2022 compilation album that reunited groups and songwriters who had once recorded for cult label Sarah Records.  The new album showcases the continuing creativity of a special group of musicians who have never rested on their laurels.

Bigger and more expansive than the first album, Under the Bridge 2 is a double LP, containing twenty brand new tracks.  There is a huge range of material here, from intense, dark chamber pop to dense shoegaze to out-and-out indiepop.  Exciting new constellations are revealed: The Gentle Spring (a new project by Michael Hiscock of The Field Mice); Vetchinsky Settings (a collaboration between James Hackett of The Orchids and Mark Tranmer of St Christopher); and Mystic Village (which features new songs by Robert Cooksey of The Sea Urchins).

You will see familiar starry names like Even As We Speak, The Orchids and Secret Shine – bands whose line-ups have remained mostly unchanged since the 1990s. And there are established bands who didn’t appear on the first album but are now represented – bands like Action Painting! and The Hit Parade.

Most of the tracks are exclusive and unreleased: there’s the first new song from The Catenary Wires since 2021, a brand new fizzbomb from Jetstream Pony, a haunting instrumental from GNAC.

The emphasis of Under The Bridge is on the new.  The artists’ shared history means they have a shared aesthetic, even a shared ethos – they all believe that the future is more important than the past.  They are as independent and as uncompromising as ever, but they are still uncynical – and still excited about what Pop Music can be.

Meanwhile, the reputation and mystique of Sarah Records, the label where all these bands first met, continue to grow.  Jane Duffus’s book These Things Happen has tapped into an ongoing appetite for news about a label that bucked the trend, ignored standard music industry rules and released some of the best pop music of the 1990s.

Rob Pursey of Skep Wax Records says ‘It was exciting to be reunited with the bands we’d shared a label with back in the 1990s.  It’s even more exciting to hear how the bands have evolved: they all seem to get stronger with the passing years.’

Under The Bridge 2 is available as vinyl double LP, CD and digital download. It will not be on streaming sites. It is distributed to stores through Cargo, and Redeye in the US. CDs and LPs include a 24-page illustrated colour booklet.  

There will be a couple of UK gigs to celebrate the new release.