Scene and Heard – CCXVIII : It’s Up To Us! – Phillip Foxley

If you think that rock and roll is strictly a young man’s game, artists such as Phillip Foxley quickly remind us that this is certainly not the case. The genre may try to sell an image of young firebrands wielding guitars like weapons and kicking at the conventions of society, but the reality is that youthful exuberance is quite quickly replaced with a whole different and more useful set of skills and it is these that allow you to actually stay in the game and have a career in music. Skills such as concise song writing, the ability to craft infectious melody and actually having something to say in your song. All things that Phillip Foxley brings to the fore in It’s Up To Us!

That it is political with a very small p, socially conscious and acutely resonant in these disunited times shows the level of maturity you would expect from a man who has put the hours in at the sharp end of the gig circuit. That it is hook-filled, has addictive and memorable choruses and a deft and hypnotic guitar line also shows you just how good he is at his craft. Some rock music is all about rhetoric and bluster, is about style over substance, but this isn’t. Instead it makes you think, makes you relate, makes you want to discuss implications. The fact that it does all of that to a musical bassline which will make you want to dance your arse off is a real bonus.