Devon via Lancashire’s Half Captain is the musical moniker for singer-songwriter Martin Burt. A total DIY project, Burt writes, records, produces and creates the artwork from his home studio.
In 2021, Half Captain put out ‘Lost Covers’, an album of Doves covers, as part of a Mental Health UK charity campaign. Bridging that work with this EP is Burt’s version of ‘The Last Broadcast’. Doves gently tumbled from high to low, allowing Jimi Goodwin’s voice to fray with anguish. Tackling this head-on would be disastrous for even the well-intentioned. Burt, mercifully, takes things down a notch into a half-life witching hour that the EP rarely deviates from. His slight smoky drawl adds a pained integrity to the tumultuous lyrics that a song of this magnitude deserves.
Half Captain succeed when residing in the wee hours. The title track’s elegant but forlorn guitars chime like a lo-fi Slow Readers Club. The down-temp sonic allows for the pained lyrics to take a stranglehold on this journey of brutally pained acceptance:
“Nothing feels like it’s good enough / falling in and falling out of love / put the brakes on to make it stop / this is life now”
Despite the morose plea to “make me disappear”, his Goodwin via Bernard Sumner vocal brings him to the surface to decree “Don’t turn take your back on the ones you love”. It allows just enough light to prevent the darkness from becoming all-encompassing.
On ‘As Long As Everything Is Alright’ and ‘Accidental Strangers’, an autumnal beauty emerges alongside the moonlit guitars and production. The former taps into the aching shoegaze of Daniel Land and Engineers, Noel Gallagher’s sense of fading away, with nodes of Depeche Mode’s gothic production. ‘Accidental Strangers’, however, an ode to outsiders (“We’ll take the world on you and I”) delves into the morbid beauty of The National. If ‘In The Firing Line’ were our protagonists at their lowest ebb, ‘Accidental Strangers’ is their road to recovery. Down, but not out, they’re “accidental strangers, accidentally out of time”.
At points, the EP is emotional ice. Musically, lyrically, and spiritually, there does come a much-needed thaw. The journey from dark to light is measured but impactful as those whose music furiously spirals out of control.