Sally Rodgers and Steve Jones’s music has long been associated with blissful beach scenes. Early evangelists for the Ibizan Balearic aesthetic, and stalwarts of untold chillout compilations, as A Man Called Adam they make the sort of music people call “sun-dappled”. So it may surprise casual listeners to find that their new album, The Girl With a Hole in Her Heart, was inspired by abandoned steelworks, poisoned shellfish and the harsh North Sea winds of the Teesside coast where Rodgers grew up.
It’s not really a radical departure, though. It’s still full of disco, electropop and lush, lyrical downtempo moods – with the lyrics poetically abstracted rather than agit-prop or kitchen-sink realist. The pair first put it together remotely, during Covid lockdown, then together in north-east England just as allegations of corruption around Teesside’s de-industrialisation were emerging. And this, Rodgers says, “provided us with something to be angry about, something to be proud about, all kinds of emotions. It prompted me to write about my childhood, too, and gave this record a sense of place.”
