Things are rough all over. Multiple fronts are being battered by hurricanes, tornados, and facsism has its claws embedded in places where it was previously unheard of as generations far removed from the grim realities of its practice 80 + years ago fall prey to social manipulation tools designed by those very same fascists …of 80+ years ago. It’s enough to make grown men weep, or, if they’re songwriter Tot Taylor, put their notions down in song.

When UK PM Rishni Sunak infamously held a press conference last May to announce a general election for… this Friday, July 5th, he was drenched and humiliated in a stew partly of his own making as the “unseasonable” rains of summer were hitting their marks far too early in the spring. The next thing you knew, “Rishi’s Rain” became a meme, as these things are called nowadays. And now it’s commemorated in song by Tot Taylor. Let’s listen!

Tot Taylor: Rishi’s Rain – UK – DL [2024]

1. Rishi’s Rain

The acoustic guitar chords underpinned multiple vocal streams of Taylor filling the space of the song with multiple takes of the vocal making certain to not really harmonize. Instead, the voices strove for a messier, slightly chaotic mien suggestive of a throng, not a singer. Then rich trills of bassy synthesizer followed by quirky chirps of incongruously playful synths added texture and movement to the cut. Where there might have been a middle eight in normal times, this time the music bed dropped down to a throbbing march tempo while the vocal lines revolved into a marching chant as one might hear on the front lines of a demonstration. Delivering highly pointed commentary, though this being from the pen of Tot Taylor, he still deleted the expletive, and included my favorite French phrase, raison d’être! But it’s the thought that counted as the multiple instances of himself ad libbed their frustration in the coda.

Fifteen years ago, I had imagined that humanity would be united in the sacrifice to prevent earth’s temperature from rising any higher, much as we had in World War II to prevent the spread of fascism, but that was apparently a pipe dream. Besides, where’s the money in that? Instead we are frogs slowly boiling in the pot as those fascists mentioned earlier are making plans to stay. Well, we’ll see where Mr. Sunak is on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Rule of Law has been abolished by our Supreme Court, so… no worries! At least we are getting some appropriate protest music to assuage our angst, with Taylor’s pen being feverishly busy these last few years. This one will set us back a slim £1.00 in your choice of DL formats of a wide variety of stripes. Mr. DJ hit that button.

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