FIJ,PETE/BICKERS,TERRY - We Are Millionaires (Sealed) (CD)

The release in 2014 of Broken Heart Surgery, the debut album from Pete Fij / Terry Bickers, was met with widespread acclaim as the two former Creation artists put their more indie-rock pasts (Adorable / Polak for Fij and House of Love / Levitation for Bickers) behind them to write a series of beautifully bruised songs of heartbreak and loss, that drew comparisons with Simon and Garfunkel, The Velvet Underground, Richard Hawley and Johnny Cash. The long awaited follow up, We Are Millionaires, released on Broadcast Recording Company, sees the duo still circling around a lake of melancholy, but there are signs that the two have their eyes on the horizon where maybe, just maybe, there might be an escape to a happier world. There is the hint of hope in the John Barry meets Peggy Lee-esque If The World Is All We Have and in the cinematic swooping strings and dream-pop guitars of first single Love’s Going To Get You. That could be the sound of a heart stirring from hibernation in Waking Up, but like some kind of doomed film noir hero, Bickers and Fij can never quite escape the echo of their downbeat hearts. Despite the evocations of a sunnier world, all of these songs suggest that every silver lining has a cloud, and that the happy ending is tantalisingly just out of reach. For all its promise of a new beginning, Waking Up ends on the repeated coda “It’s been a long, long winter” and If The World Is All We Have is, in fact, on closer inspection, the sound of a Groundhog Day attempt to cling on to a moment of happiness. The seemingly romantically titled I Love You is in fact a song yearning the fact that those three words are not so much a declaration of devotion, but more the missing syllables absent between a couple. Whilst Broken Heart Surgery was a singular piece focussed on the break up of a relationship, We Are Millionaires is a wider reaching affair dealing with bereavement (Over You), depression (Sometime Soon) and even a ray of sunshine of unqualified love (Mary Celeste). The album also focuses on Bickers and Fij’s own relationship as the two get all bromantic on Let’s Get Lost Together - a kind of Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra style number, where the two point out each other’s faults before acknowledging that they should stagger on together. Like a pair of ill-fated lovers, Bickers and Fij can never quite (yet) make that break across the border into happiness, but there is the strong suggestion that in a skewed way, they are happy in their beat up world.