S. Michael Brook And The Steam-Powered Trains

Following the lo-fi, homespun charm of 2025's 'Old Master', Publicity Department return with the amped-up, full band effort: 'S. Michael Brook And The Steam-Powered Trains', released 23/10/26 on Safe Suburban Home.

Having moved away from London, singer/songwriter Sean Brook decided that his next album should be recorded live. "I was in a new area and didn't know anyone yet, so I thought rehearsing the album with the band would give me regular reasons to leave the house". The decision was also inspired by the material: "I'd been listening to stuff like the Raspberries and Phil Seymour a lot and was trying to write more of a power pop record, so I needed a more upbeat and energetic sound than I could get at home". The Publicity Department live band (Tom Rundell, L.P. Gavin, Dan Conant - newly christened 'The Steam-Powered Trains') was summoned and the album was recorded in one day in August 2025 at The Bookhouse with Tom Hill, with Brook completing vocals and overdubs at home.

The resulting album is half an hour of crunchy guitars and two-part vocal harmonies; the power pop influences distorted through Brook's 90s alt rock sensibilities.

Lead single '(I'm Sorry) This Is Your Life' is perhaps the most straightforwardly poppy cut, with its winding melody and no-nonsense three-chord chorus disturbed only by Brook's delivery of the song's title, a ferocious primal scream cutting through the jollities. It concerns the singer's worries about passing his own failings onto his son, a theme also explored in the fuzzed-out 90s swagger of 'I Pray My Boy Won't Be A Coward (Like Me)'. Elsewhere the album deals with oversharing ("Keep A Lid On It"), domestic challenges ("Uptight") and art ("ATM") . All interwoven with Brook's exaggerated (entirely accurate?) version of his own persona; variously a bitter, paranoid, perennially hopeful, failure.