European Sun: When Britain Was Great

 Album Review

European Sun

When Britain Was Great

(Skep Wax)  

DL/LP (Available on Red vinyl, with extra 1-track CD. Includes optional MP3 downloads)

Released 23 Jan 2026

(5/5)

The single When Britain was Great was the flagship for the album of the same name, and the 17 minute epic School Report wouldn’t fit on the vinyl so is a bonus CD, but that song makes it worth the price alone.  This is an album like no other and is an angry, gentle, heartfelt plea for humanity in a bewildering world, says Ged Babey, full of songs that are radical, sardonic, sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, always melodic.

This is a punk record… say the label

And it is, but punk as in ‘no rules’, complete freedom of expression, ‘truth’ rather than a style of music and a certain straight-jacket of sound.  What Skep Wax call the fearless phase of punk adventurism – TV Personalities, The Mekons, The Desperate Bicycles… Punk before it regressed to Rock. 

European Sun seem to me, to take inspiration from: the poetic depersonalisation of Devoto (I wandered loaded as a crowd...) the romantic vision of Shelley (I believe in..) the consumer consciousness of Poly Styrene, the frank honesty of the (Limp) Alternative TV and the fatalism of Young Marble Giants (Final Day) and marry it to the Punk As Ideas spoken by unique voices like Jonathan Richman and Patrik Fitzgerald.

Not the caricature that Punk became: the Bash Street Kids playing rock’n’roll.  And stretching the Beano analogy, Steve Miles is far more of a punk Walter the Softy than the standard issue Dennis the Menace… and we are 50 years on from the beginnings of punk as many an online and broadsheet features will remind us this year…

So I am tempted to call  When Britain Was Great  – the last great punk album: that doesn’t actually sound very punk rock at all – but only because I want it to be heard and appreciated rather than a vulgar attempt at over-sell.

A song called simply Hugs from the first European Sun album starts with a spoken intro which ends with these words:

I just think we can never have enough sharing and never have too much openness about what goes on inside our hearts and our heads…

On When Britain Was Great Steve Miles (who is, to all intents and purposes European Sun) succeeds in being the most open and honest a songwriter he can possibly be. He shares virtually everything about his life and thoughts.  But not in a ‘tortured-artist’, ‘woe-is-me’ way.  He does it in his own, methodical way. Like he is trying to find the answer to a puzzle.

There are two key songs on this album which are absolutely heart-breaking – so much so, that it is painful to listen.  You feel like you are intruding on private thoughts.

One is about discovering a beloved partners infidelity and realising the relationship is over –The Space She Left,  and the other, Dad, about thinking about your deceased father and how as you get older, you get to know more about him and wish he was still around to see you solvent/moderately successful and how great his grandchildren are.

(Of course there are other songwriters who have covered these kind of topics, ‘the Break-Up album’ is a big-selling cliché for the likes of Adele and Lily Allen.  The melodramatic ‘grief-fest’ too for serious rock artists as they reach a certain age…. but this is completely unlike all of that…)

This is an album that an ‘underground artist’ who just HAD to make it – as his way of communicating with the world – and saying, this is me – this is what I have learned and what I think – presented in the only way I know – words & music.  And it covers everything happening globally in its scope: war, bigotry, disillusionment with politics, toxic masculinity…

It’s not an autobiography, or a manifesto, a ‘secret history’ – but in a weird way, it is all of those, and more, done in a unique, beautiful, heart-warming way – although of course, not without its flaws. But it is the flawed genius of When Britain Was Great that makes it so…. great.

Too many problems, too few solutions. / Too much plastic, / too much pollution. / Not enough kindness, too my greed / Too many different people to please

The first two songs are about the modern age (as Jonathan Richman would call it) and have Buzzcock hooks.  Choice Paralysis is not only the reaction to consumerist decisions but fear of life’s endless choices. Going Viral is  the same theme but via the omnipresent and malign influence of social media  – and all of this thru the prism of being ‘on the spectrum’ perhaps – or as Steve sings, self critically: Too much choice paralysis – Homemade psychoanalysis.

Two songs, In Bedford Falls and Falling Down The Stairs With Arthur Seaton take inspirations from classic old movies:  It’s a Wonderful Life and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning respectively. The latter features fantastic stumbling bass-playing. In Bedford Falls has the most exquisitely beautiful music on the whole album and includes the lines:

If we want to see more equity and kindness in this world
We have to start by reaching out to hold somebody’s hand

When I Have Fears takes its title from the Keats poem -which is recited at the end over a reggae bassline – and includes a slightly confusing football analogy about war and peace. ‘Lets call it a draw’.

Edward Colston’s Likeness takes on the subject of slavery, inspired by the statue toppling in Bristol and subsequent re-naming of a popular arts venue. Steve’s quotes in the song come from some unusual sources: 

History is a lie agreed upon, said Napoleon Bonaparte:
And those who control the present always control the past.

(Elsewhere he quotes Marilyn Monroe and George Bernard Shaw – and all in a gentle voice, not unlike Pet-Shop-Boy Neil Tennant – who would probably love this album – but want to set it to a disco beat)

It is oddly preceded by a care free pop song, still able to access the wide-eyed wisdom of childhood: The Sea Is A Pirate’s Best Friend  which expresses a kind of joy that we all had once, but have lost contact with.

Fetishization of a World War by patriots who are too pumped up to realise the war was a fight against Nazism is picked apart in Angels In The Clouds. Although centring it around Vera Lynn doesn’t perhaps make it sound that ‘current’.

The Title track and School Report (the 17 minute one on a bonus CD) are the songs which are at the beating heart of this spectacular, varied, strange, yet absolutely wonderful album. Lyrically there is just so much to love, laugh at and nod your head in agreement to:

I go back to my emails. It takes forever to load and I feel like I’m being punished for all my mean thoughts. By God, via broadband, I suppose. Assuming God still has power over big tech companies, which seems unlikely come to think of it. Much more likely the other way around.

As I said before, School Report is an epic. The War-and-Peace of Pop-songs. A fantastic-journey to the centre-of-a-mind… a self-study in neurodivergence, an over-share of one mans thoughts & anxieties…. an analysis of how the past manifests itself in the minutiae of everyday life…. Genius.

European Sun is Steve Miles, with support from Elin Miles (backing vox), Rob Pursey (bass) and Ian Button (drums).  The first two are one of Steve’s daughters and his best-mate from school (also a member of numerous bands and ‘label boss’ at the cottage-industry label who have released the album).

This is an under the radar, independent release that won’t reach a lot of people who might well love it.  In the (so-called) Golden Age,  John Peel would have been telling the world about it via the BBC and the NME would have picked up on it…. it would’ve been a huge, important album.

But it is 2026 and it will be heard and loved by ‘the few’ – but, to them, this will be the single most precious piece of artistic expression they have heard for a long time.  A work that has been a lifetime in the making. An album that covers so much – from school to today – from self-analysis to global issues and everything in-between – and the struggle to connect with the world and others.

If you finish reading the review, buy the album, love it… then do me a favour: contact your friend(s) who ‘don’t do social media’, who you think will like it too, and send them details of how to get hold of it.  Old-School, Word of Mouth. Ta.  (Oddly, these are probably the people who will really appreciate it the most….)

TRACKLIST
1 Choice Paralysis
2 Going Viral
3 Dad
4 The Angels In The Clouds
5 in Bedford Falls
6 The Space She Left
7 Falling Down The Stairs With Arthur Seaton
8 The Sea Is A Pirate’s Best Friend
9 Edward Colston’s Likeness
10 When Britain Was Great
11 Their Ncuti Gatwa Poster
12 When I Have Fears

13 School Report (bonus track on special CD)

I’ve got a few things right, Dad, though I’ve got a lot more wrong,
I understand you better every day since you’ve been gone
The story’s carried on, Dad, I’ve resolved some of the tension,
On better days, I even think I just might find redemption

UK TOUR DATES (2026)  – TICKETS

31 Jan RAINHAM The Oast Community Centre
1 Feb: NOTTINGHAM JT Soar
5 Feb: BRISTOL Thunderbolt
6 Feb: OXFORD Library
7 Feb: LONDON Betsey Trotwood (matinee)
8 Feb: BRIGHTON The Albert (matinee)

When Britain Was Great | European Sun

European Sun back catalogue on Bandcamp

Steve Miles writes an occasional guest column for PennyBlack Music, in which he discusses common themes across a wide range of music, and explores links between music and mental health in its widest sense, called In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. His column has included long-form in-depth interviews with the likes of Jah Wobble, Wreckless Eric, Tom Robinson, and Peter Perrett.

All words Ged Babey with press release and artists content in italics.