British Band Martha’s New Song “Please Don’t Take Me Back” Is Fervently Anti-nostalgia

Sometimes it’s fun to be nostalgic — to look back on your life and think about what could have been, what was, and how fun (or not fun) it all was. That’s what British band Martha’s new song is about too, although they’re not looking at the past longingly, or through rose-tinted glasses. 

Bucking the trend that a lot of bands take part in hopping on the nostalgia bandwagon and trying to capture the sounds of the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, “Please Don’t Take Me Back” is fervently anti-nostalgia. 

“Take me back to the old days, take me back to the glory days we had,” guitarist and vocalist Daniel Ellis sings in the song’s chorus before remembering that rather than being the glory days nostalgia is making them out to be, the glory days were actually “really fucking sad.”

The song is especially relevant after the world is beginning to emerge from a pandemic in which people realized that while they no longer wished to live in a world with a raging disease, they want to emerge into a new world. We’re living in a new era in which workers are demanding to be treated fairly, women are demanding to be treated fairly, and there’s still so much left to change. Martha isn’t looking to go back but instead make a new way forward.

This is Martha’s first release since their 2019 album Love Keeps Kicking released on Dirtnap Records in the US and Big Scary Monsters Recording Company in their native UK. The band, which is based out of Pity Me, County Durham in the furthest north reaches of England, is releasing the song as part of a two-song EP. “Please Don’t Take Me Back” is the first song that Martha has released off of the band’s upcoming two-track EP, set to be released physically and digitally on June 24. The EP is available for preorder on the band’s Bandcamp.