Interview + Album Release – Polite Bureaux

I first caught Polite Bureaux by chance mid line-up at a gig at The Albert in Brighton last year. About 30 seconds in it was clear they were going to be the highlight of the night, fusing punk poetry with a jagged edge and bass driven electro-beats. For me, there are a few acts that stand out in the current music scene, and those are the ones who take no prisoners when it comes to their sound or stage presence, the ones that you hear and things instantly uplift, the ones whose performance hits you from the word go and there’s no respite. More gigs and releases down the line cement the fact that Polite Bureaux firmly fit the bill. Their debut album Cunt Monday is out today and, featuring all the favourite tracks from live shows, mixes from music maestros James Adrian Brown and Kieron Pepper, and a collab with recent touring accomplice Meryl Streek, is set to jump straight onto our best albums of 2024 list. Ahead of its release, I spoke to vocalist Joe Smith about how the collection of hard-hitting anecdotes came about…

Hey, how are you – can you give us a quick intro to Polite Bureaux and who’s playing in the band with you now?

Hi, we’re all good and just back from the Meryl Streek tour where we met lovely people. We shared a number of our new tracks on the tour from our DIY debut album Cunt Monday, we all had a great time and were joined on stage by Connor Griffiths on drums for the tour. Our line up is Viv Maher on bass, Maya my sister on keys, and myself on vocals.

You started making music in Bradford – what brought you down to Brighton and how has the change impacted on your material?

Moving around the country became a thing for myself and Maya since 2016, our parents lost their home and we moved from one place to another, there were a lot of nights where it was uncertain if it was going to be spent in a car, a friend’s house and there was a lot of Travelodge. My own move to Brighton was at the advice of my Dad who said go and study and get a student loan to get some stability, so that’s what I did and it turned out that this lived story became part of our debut album.

Walk us round your favourite places in Brighton – where do you go that’s not on the tourist map?

Got a bit of a hankering for supermarkets and do like a visit to the old Aldi near Portslade train station.

You’re building up a strong following live – what makes the energy kick in when you’re performing?

People have started singing along to the words of Taylor Mift, that’s nice…

Your debut album Cunt Monday is out today – how long has it been in the making and who’s been involved?

The album Cunt Monday started as stories and poems written about the hard times, our Dad wrote a lot of the stories that started in 2016, the first story and track Rollercoaster about how they lost the house, and people and experiences that affected us as he navigated the simple things like finding a place to stay. And the experiences of dealing with the universal credit system that he has always insisted sets anyone coming into that system on a path to fail.

Tell us the story behind one of the tracks.

Scratchcard is about those times moving around, the M606 is a motorway outside Bradford that connects to the M62. It’s a true story of almost running out of fuel and buying a scratchcard and winning enough to fuel up, but it’s also about the ‘scratchcard’ that seems to be a good representation of Britain, there is hope and desperation for some buying a scratchcard and as for Britain, it just seems to get harder to afford to live here, but we cling on and hope.

Last year you supported Benefits and you’ve just finished touring with Meryl Streek – there seems to be a bit of a resurgence of punk values with artists having something to voice in their songs about the state of the society we’re living in, do you see Polite Bureaux as being a platform to do that?

Sharing our own stories and taking them out on tour with Meryl Streek has warmed our hearts. We have met people who relate to the stories and, by talking about these sometimes difficult moments in the joyful way we have put it into music, we escape, even if it’s just for an hour, it has certainly made us feel happier.

Who else would be on your perfect line-up to play a gig or event with?

Big Special, Sleaford Mods, Bob Vylan and Viagra Boys.

The brilliant John Cooper Clarke has been cited as an influence in your writing – do you have a favourite poem or line from a poem of his?

I Wanna Be Yours – ‘I wanna be your vacuum cleaner, Breathing in your dust’.
It helped us write the track Lap Top Computer and the line ‘I wanna be your Lap Top Computer, Downloading all your porn, I wanna be your electric scooter, beep, beep, beep on your horn’.

Any three tracks by any artists that you’d always want on your playlist?

Viagra Boys – Research Chemicals
Amyl and The Sniffers – Guided By Angels
John Cooper Clarke – Twat

And if you’re not busy enough with the album release and continuing to smash the live circuit, what’s on the cards for Polite Bureaux in 2024?

There will be an album release show coming up around the 9^th April 2024 in Brighton. We have our own six date tour coming up in September 2024 and tickets will go on sale in a month’s time. We are already recording our second album, so back in studio and have already recorded a track called Bradford that is a bit of a heartbreaker, and we hope to be playing a part in the Bradford City of Culture.

Cunt Monday is available here on Bandcamp today before hitting all major streaming platforms on 28th March. There are also a very limited edition 100 vinyl copies up for pre-order, each with handmade individual first edition numbered covers 1/100, hand stamps and drawing/signing by the band. The album comes highly recommended, as does a trip to see Polite Bureaux live – follow them here for news on releases and tour dates.