For (‘the other’) Phil Campbell, the analogy that works best is a failed marriage. “I was dreaming about The Byson Family at exactly the same time I was recording the third and last record with The Temperance Movement,” the singer says of his old and new bands. “It’s like I’d completely and utterly fallen in love with someone else, who I couldn’t have, but I was making an album with my ex.”
Perhaps nobody ever really gets a fresh start in rock’n’roll. Since quitting The Temperance Movement in January 2020, the singer might have come home to Glasgow for the first time in two decades, reinvented his sound and cast himself as Philip Seth Campbell. “The guy from the Pixies always changes his name,” he shrugs, “so I thought I’d start over, be this guy.” But his past repeatedly crashes the conversation, often at his behest. “I’ll talk about all that,” he says. “I’m desperate to talk about it. It’s all I think about. Especially in lockdown. Like, what the fuck just happened?”