Few English bands over the past 20 years or so kept it as real as Hard-Fi. Richard Archer and the boys made their name from a street-smart style of indie, relaying the grittier side of life and doing it whilst canvassing a seedy underground from here to Surrey. Every Hard-Fi track was fit for both fighting or fucking, and each felt like a mini-chapter in an ongoing storyline. While the band certainly had its share of hits and misses (we still don’t get how 2011 rager “Fire in the House” wasn’t absolutely massive), they always felt like an integral part of the more dependable side of the uneven British indie scene.
Well, life is always kinda fucked, and here we are a decade on from the last jolt of Hard-Fi sweetness. Which makes new joint “Don’t Go Making Plans” all the more tasty; the buoyant groove-pop track dropped yesterday (May 20), proving the band hasn’t missed a beat. “Don’t Go Making Plans” teases a forthcoming EP and a headlining tour of the UK this fall.
And here, Hard-Fi are taking it back to the streets.
“‘Don’t Go Making Plans’ is sort of a protest song about protest, but I wanted to encapsulate that message into something that was still a pop song,” says Archer. “A track that you can still dance to in a club or play on the radio, because a song like that you can make a real connection to and circumnavigates the pointless restrictions being put in our way. Governments passing laws to stop protests that ’cause more than minor disruption feels like something out of a dystopian film. The whole point of protest is disruption. You’re trying to interrupt the inevitable flow of things, to encourage the people running the country to think again, especially when you have a government that doesn’t seem to be bothered by what people actually need.”
Welcome back.
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