M G Boulter – Clifftown
M G Boulter – Clifftown
Format: CD – LP – Digital
Label: Hudson Records
Release: 2021
Release Date: April 23 2021
M G Boulter’s new album, ‘Clifftown’, uniquely charts the characters, personal histories and stories of growing up in English seaside suburbia. Its songs are both observant and affecting; here you will find not only the neon lights and burnt sugar smells of a Saturday night seafront but also the solitary Essex noir of the salt marshland. As M G demurely sings in the title track ‘Clifftown’, “Their kids grow up to a lawnmower drone/ their kids grow old and move away from home/ by seafront palisades they’re swapping smokes/before they’re gone”. So evocative has the project been for M G that he has created a podcast series (‘The Clifftown Podcast’) exploring the culture of this often overlooked experience of British seaside life.
Serving his apprenticeship in numerous bands in the hotbed of the Southend-on-Sea pub rock scene (the precursors of which were household names such as Dr Feelgood and Eddie and the Hot Rods), M G has been quietly working at creating rich and evocative story songs since 2013. Garnering praise from reviewers like Uncut describing his work as “gorgeous in a word” and R2 listing him as “a weapons grade songwriter”, M G creates vignettes of suburban lives and seaside communities and is a contemporary voice in the long tradition of the singer-songwriter.
Often referred to as the artist’s artist M G has been a much sought after collaborator in the folk and Americana scenes, having significant tenures in the Simone Felice Group, The Duke and the King, Emily Portman’s Coracle Band, Blue Rose Code and The Owl Service. The roll call of musicians appearing on Clifftown include Pete Flood and Sam Sweeney (Bellowhead), Lucy Farrell (The Furrow Collective) and Richard Warren (Spiritualized, Mark Lanegan and Dave Gahan). Clifftown was produced and recorded with long-time collaborator Andy Bell.
Having previously released two albums and numerous EPs, Clifftown is M G’s most complete work to date, creating an immersive world rich with ordinary lives glimpsed through fairground grease and mindless 9 to 5 jobs. As much social commentary as an honest picture postcard of his hometown, Clifftown is an exquisite and life-affirming exploration of modern suburbia and the British seaside by one of the UK’s finest songwriting talents.