Hats Off Gentlemen It's Adequate - Parallel Lives (2026)

About a year and a half ago, around the time we were developing the tracks that became this album, I found out that I have a rare, incurable, progressive, neurodegenerative retinal disease that is causing progressive visual loss and distortion. I’ve previously had other medical problems that had led to me having to give up my previous career, and I had thought I’d found a way of coping with those while still feeling able to keep creatively active.

Although I haven’t been consciously worrying about my eyes, (possibly emotionally in denial), this diagnosis coincided with me deteriorating mentally in other ways. I am aware that other people have worse problems, and am not wanting to make a fuss, but it knocked my sense of my identity and future. Whether deliberately or not, this has fed into the music on this album.

‘My Blistering Mind’ is sung from the perspective of someone struggling with mental health issues. [Where I mention ‘splintering mind’ inn the song, I think I mean a mind that has jagged edges that cause pain, rather than anything related to schizophrenia or multiple-personality disorders].

‘The Mandatory Prize’ is sung from the perspective of an authority figure informing someone that they are obliged to play a role that they haven’t chosen, and that they are supposed to at least pretend that they are grateful. In an exaggerated way, via the influence of a Philip K Dick short story, it is about social masking.

‘Never Really Felt Like Home’ is a melancholic instrumental, featuring Kathryn Thomas on flute, bass flute, and piccolo.

‘Smile, Smile, Smile’ was inspired by Philip K Dick’s novel ‘Flow My Tears The Policeman Said’, published in 1974. In the novel, the protagonist (Jason Taverner) wakes up in a world where he is no longer one of the most famous people on the planet. He goes from being a highly privileged person in a police-state, to an undocumented person, and therefore at constant risk of being sent to a forced labour camp.