Once upon a time there was songwriting: the one with voice and acoustic guitar, which behind its apparent simplicity hid so much depth of mind, with lyrics that were poetry, windows on a world that sometimes needed different words to be explained . Then something went wrong at a certain point, and many who called themselves “songwriters” paved the way for success with songs that talked about things not really essential to humanity – like yet another song about how much they missed the ex girlfriend. Fortunately, however, history has run its course and have always come out authors capable of creating acute and intense lyrics, able to dig deep into the human soul, adapting them to their own musical genre, which almost always differed from the simplicity of that original duo.Tom Bright, in the midst of all this variety, can be called a traditional songwriter and his debut album (released on May 1st) is the perfect proof.
Self-Service Checkout is one of the most intimate and personal albums – but at the same time so attentive to external reality – that I have ever heard in recent years. And we’re not talking about an established musician, with a decades-long career behind him: Tom, on his first attempt, shows himself for what he is, that is, a songwriter sensitive and attentive not only to what happens inside himself, but also to the circumstances and the stories of people who are part of it.
The disc begins with an introduction, a rhyming poem with a theatrical flow that ends in the simplest and therefore so pleasant way, which immediately puts us at ease: Me name is Tom Bright. Following, Bless Our Generation, a reflection on today’s world, where glowing screens killed magazines, where the success and value of things and people is measured on the basis of likes and views, the world of consumerism, terrorism, the environmental crisis and health speculation, but also an ode to the generation – that of Tom – who, for better or for worse, lacks everything and nothing.
But the themes of Bright’s songs are not only serious or critical, there’s also a good dose of daily observation, of introspection, of curiosity in the lives of others. Love is the protagonist of Last Night’s Kebab, but it’s not a sweet and carefree feeling, but rather a tormented and frustrated one, as emerges above all in the following track, Wedding Bells (personally, my favourite of the whole album): the protagonist is a wife disillusioned with her marriage, trapped by monotony and boredom, in the bitter note of having had to sacrifice all her dreams to stay with a man who only reserves her superficial attention and lies.
Yeah, she thinks
“Is this what we’ve become”?
This is not the fairytale you promised
Since I said “I do” you’ve been dishonest
Is this what we’ve become?
A beautiful, melancholic and poignant song that, although not all listeners live the married life in first person, still allows to empathize and share the pain.
Introspection takes hold in the songs Caught Up In The Fog and Storm In A Teacup, which deal with the issues of mental health, fragility, confusion and the difficulty of asking for help. It’s in these two tracks that Tom comes out in all his moving vulnerability, in the fear of losing control of the first song:
Will I lose myself before I lose everyone else
In the fragments of my fragile self?
…and in comparison with the harsh reality of the second one:
I suffer in silence on my own
Too afraid to pick up the phone
Losing weeks spent in my bed
My worries so heavy I can’t lift my head
Follow Lighthouse, a song on giving encouragement and support to those who have experienced violence, Ships In The Night – another family story marked by a rushing acoustic guitar that pierces the silence -, the title track Self-Service Checkout, whose characters are simple people whose work is threatened by the advance of technology, which increasingly replaces man, and which makes everything more frenetic preventing us from enjoying the small moments, as sung in How Do We Keep Up With Time?:
It’s the speed in which we’re living
That’s so unforgiving
It’s in the last track of the album, Blood & Water, that Bright tells us another story, one in which we can all identify ourselves: a friendship between two children so similar / growing old less familiar, that tend to step away from each other, between misunderstandings and betrayals; but it’s a story with a happy ending, albeit bitter, to say that it’s never too late to forgive and mend ties with people we once considered brothers.
With this first album, Tom Bright performs a very brave action: in a world where one desperately tries to make everything spectacular and ideal, he focuses on simple people and stories, sung without too many turns of words yet with incredible finesse, only with his voice and his guitar, restoring the beauty of everyday life and spontaneity and allowing us, not only to return with our feet on the ground, but also to train the empathy and criticality necessary to observe and understand ourselves, the others and what surrounds us.
DISCORDANCE 
Un pensiero riguardo “Today we review… Tom Bright – “Self-Service Checkout” (The Future Is Bright Recordings, 2020)”