Shrube’s ‘Blue’ Takes Blokeacola And Pal Into 70’s Soft Rock Era; Biting Awareness Of Today’s World Remains

The atmosphere Shrube delivers on the new LP ‘Blue’ is contemplative, searching, and laced with threads of both optimism and despair. Not sure any listener would have suggested to Blokeacola that his next musical step should arrive in the vein of 70’s soft rock and the likes of Gordon Lightfoot. But here we are, and it works.

Blokeacola’s observant, cynical take on the world remains in ‘Blue,’ this time in an acoustic guitar vibe. Perhaps an influence from @SpencesStuff? It carries the first six songs until track number seven, “Dumb People Think They’re Smart” unveils a short directional shift. A beautiful soundscape…but within this new realm, lines like “Life’s an unsolved crime.”

Because I am old, bands like America (think “Sandman,” among other tunes) and the previously mentioned Gordon Lightfoot (think “Pussywillows, Cat Tails” and “Go-Go Round”) come to mind for me. Of course all of it is delivered through a truly 2026 lens. A complicated world, troubling times.

You could play “Sundown” and “Wind Up” back to back and make it work.

An early highlight is the first single, “Poison.” Kudos on the rhyming use of aroma, soma, and coma. That about sums it up for many of us. Keep those pills handy.

So many ways for sensitive humans to react and reflect to the world around them. Shrube goes to a place of soft, penetrating awareness, softened by guitar strums encouraging escape. Almost as if to somehow will the listener past this time and place, and into a better ‘next.’ How else to explain the reach of songs like “Everything is Better on the Couch?”

‘Blue’ is a musical retreat from the horrors of today. A further sinking in to one’s own mind, purely for survival. It might seem sad, counterproductive or bordering on nihilistic escapism. But it is also beautiful and honest.

Welcome to 2026.

The press release says:

“Shrube are Owen Spence and William Gray (Blokeacola). They first got talking in the lunch queue at secondary school in the 1990s. They can’t recall what was on the menu that day but they do remember finding an uncle’s bass guitar in a shed some time later. Both members of Leeds’ favourites The Smokestacks in the naughty noughties, it appeared their ability to collaborate was over with William’s move to Hangzhou, China (coincidentally a twin city of Leeds, where Owen resides). But the Shrubular pals reconnected and put out ‘Yellow’ Shrube (2023), a deliberately scattergun release made just for gits and shiggles, that nevertheless received endorsements from Fresh On The Net, Amazing Radio, and Slacker Shack.”

“Evolving from an experiment utilising open tunings on an acoustic guitar, and a metronome, the album combines initial inspirations such as Nick Drake and Elliott Smith with a wider palette of more expansive sounds. Listeners might hear all manner of influences simmering away, be they The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Crowded House, Pixies, Radiohead, Air, Massive Attack, and more. Lyrically, the album very much captures the current shitegeist, threading together, often in a darkly humorous manner, meme culture, the disorientating nature of the modern day feed, and, of course, the overarching terror of being at the continual mercy, or whim, of utter tyrants.”