Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Label: Self Released
Cat No.: TBC
Format: Digital Only
For my sins, I spent much of the noughties promoting live nights at The Dry Bar and The Ruby Lounge in Manchester. These were midweek affairs, often thankless and financially dubious, and made worse by the grim truth that not many bands were worth losing money over. There were exceptions, of course. One was the short-lived but mighty Ernest from Kingston Upon Hull.
So why this reminiscence, and why review a digital single—something I’ve vowed never to do? Well, because Ernest’s frontman Terence Dunn has gone on to become something of a creative chameleon, moving gracefully from stage to screen. You may have heard his work on the documentary A Bunch of Amateurs—a bittersweet portrait of Bradford’s amateur film club, now streaming on iPlayer—or more recently, his contribution to the Oscar-nominated stop-motion Wander to Wonder.
His latest project, Saltend Recovery, is a return to fuzzed-up immediacy. Their new track, Mastered The Art, is the second glimpse of an upcoming full-length, and it lands with all the raw intensity of a punch thrown in the dark. “I’ve mastered the art of being a bastard to myself,” opens Dunn—self-lacerating, dry, and utterly arresting. Clocking in at just 1:44, it’s an unfiltered, punk-edged vignette that carries more emotional weight than most bands manage in a full EP.
The lyrics are typically elusive, sharp, and personal—think Mark E. Smith by way of Larkin, with lines like “I’ve come to look at your bottom bouncing off the church walls” offering flashes of grief, black comedy, and surreal memory. Dunn wrote the piece as a reflection on visiting his father in his later days, though like all good poetry, its meaning is mercurial—open to interpretation, coloured by mood.
There’s also a wry jab at the strange confluence of religion and medicine in British life, that uneasy blend of NHS corridors and ecclesiastical platitudes. Whether it’s anger, mourning, or just observational detachment, the track delivers it all with brevity and bite.
Mastered The Art is a compact, essential piece—raw, honest, and oddly uplifting. The forthcoming album now feels less like a curiosity and more like something to watch for. Saltend Recovery may not be Ernest, but they’re certainly not earnest—and that’s a good thing.
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
