Home Counties - Dad Bod Reworkings

By Jon Milton

‘The gift that no-one asked for’ say Home Counties of their new EP ‘Dadbod Reworkings’, which unsurprisingly features five different versions of their song Dadbod, recorded by each member of the band during lockdown. Given that comment you might think they’re being a bit hard on themselves of course, but as I found out when I met them in July, they don’t take themselves too seriously and that comment would appear to be firmly in cheek. 

Maybe its just me reading far too much into things, but each rendering of Dadbod here seems to be capturing a different mature Dad stereotype, which is all rather clever and just adds to the charm of the band. First up is ‘Will Bod’ an 80’s new romantic take for the Dad who considers himself to have quite a lot of James Bond or maybe even Zoolander about him. It’s like the deep vocal could at any stage could be asking for a vodka martini shaken, not stirred. 

Dan Bod takes more of a country / Malboro Man / Saxondale approach, resplendent with a whistled backing and a bit like the Spider Noises take on the Rolling Stones’ Let it Bleed. Thinking they’re cool but are actually slightly nerdy electronic music loving Dad surfaces on Sam Bod, somewhere between Kraftwerk and Pet Shop Boys, and Boon Dad is a drum and bass workout depicting the Dad that used to rave in the nineties but would struggle to look anything but silly trying to move along to D&B these days. 

Con Bod concludes matters, and I’d like to think it represents the properly cool Dad taking inspiration from somewhere between Kraftwerk again with its Tour De France breathing sounds and Matthew Herbert. In saying this however, I realise that (as my own children would testify) no Dad’s are actually ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ and the very use of those words as descriptions of this are testament to this.

All in all, its good fun and it’s made me smile, and as you can see think far too deeply into things. It also serves to remind us of the original Dadbod and the fact that Home Counties are one of the best new bands to have emerged this year.