With punk strumming, and a dancing drum machine, Gemma Rogers’ The Great Escape, ponders the possibility of fucking it all off and Ferris Bueller-like generating some memories that “We can live forever in.”
Gemma Rogers’ debut No Place Like Home is packed with pithy vignettes about being young in modern-day London. A partial heir to early Lily Allen, she shares her dry, observational humour and post-punk ska influence. The parallels with Allen’s Alright, Still embrace the messiness of drinking with friends, as she cheerfully confesses in a semi-spoken delivery, ‘My idea of fun, is a whole bottle of rum’.
“It’s a shitshow. A mockery. A conveyor belt of jokers,” spits Gemma Rogers. The former spoken-word artist has had a busy year giving birth to a daughter and dropping one of the most intriguing punk-pop albums of the century so far. And in the finest punk tradition, she’s also hopping mad about the UK’s dire political situation.
No Place Like Home is the debut album from Londoner Gemma Rogers and it’s a fantastic Pic ‘N’ Mix of different musical styles and emotional moods. Rogers weaves story vignettes into her songs and the album feels like a compilation of award-winning short stories.
