"This future is bright and I don't want it..." So begins David MacGregor's powerful 4th album as Broken Chanter: a collection of muscular, visceral compositions that challenge the encroaching alienation of the modern socio-political landscape. Elucidated over 10 songs fuelled by an uncanny empathy and devotion to the human spirit, This Could be Us, You, or Anybody Else builds on 2024's Scottish Album of the Year-Longlisted Chorus Of Doubt's agitprop ecstasy to delirious effect. Recorded as ever at Chemikal Underground's studio Chem19 with producer Paul Savage and with regular collaborators Charlotte Printer, Bartholomew Owl, and Martin Johnston, This Could be Us... is rock music as revelation, protest, community in action. Harking back to the activist post-punk of the early 80s to approach the future, Broken Chanter here sound vital and immediate.

Inspired by Arpita Singh's etching of the same name, This Could be Us, You, Or Anybody Else feels polemical, radical even, while centring the human stories at the heart of the oppression of the global neo-feudalist hegemony. Recorded immediately after the Chorus Of Doubt tour throughout summer and autumn 2025, Broken Chanter here are fully locked-in, fleshing out MacGregor's songs with a widescreen palette. If Chorus Of Doubt was fuelled by defiant vitriol, its partner record here is as angry, though more overt in finding a solace in community and people. Principally here with the musicians involved: Johnston's thundering drums, umbilically linked to Printer's elastic and forceful bass work are the springboard for MacGregor and fellow guitarist Bart Owl to dovetail and crisscross across the stereofield. At the centre, MacGregor's songs bristle with cinematic detail; compassionate and still, in the face of a dystopian future edging closer, full of fiery defiance.

Erudite and with eyes wide open, MacGregor's collected treatises on This Could be Us, You, or Anybody Else probe and expand on a central tenet: the needs of the many outweigh the desires of the few at the top. Broken Chanter's utilitarianism is explicitly collectivist: we are in a perpetual struggle against tyranny and it's only together that we can prevail. The myriad tyrannies of 21st Century living are pulled apart and countered throughout This Could be Us... Indeed, Singh's art referenced in the tile is replete with phrases that reimagine how life could and should be... and how it is described by MacGregor. "Terror In My Town May Be In Your Town Too," "Guests Coming To My Place May Be Your Place Too" paint a picture of shared experience and having the empathy to embody and approach others' pain, to offer some solace perhaps: as Broken Chanter frequently do. The aforementioned opener investigates what Yanis Varoufakis describes as "techno-feudalism," the digital spectre that permeates almost every facet of our online life. MacGregor's preoccupation is with how it colonises the mind of the user, promising a "bright future" of individualist desires pursued in the mouth of vulturous platform capitalism. With the stark phrase "Did you take a lease on a nightmare," the singer challenges the erosion of our personal, meaningful connections through rentierism by capital.

On Shake It To Bits, a tight Post-Punk groove finds MacGregor in character as a hypermasculine grifter, literally growing in both physical stature and alienation with every verse. The treatise proposed by MacGregor is that the pursuit of a perfection, in this case a mutant masculinity, erases the trace of the human inside. With the singer's impassioned delivery over the band's propulsion, it's hard to argue with. The glowing hot seam of anger continues on Piazzale Loreto, named for the Milan square where Mussolini was displayed after his execution: here the songwriter investigates our once-immutable moral certitudes, how we've been plunged into a moral mirrorworld by power. It's a theme continued elsewhere on the record: on Ghosts Of The Gaps, the pace slows down, MacGregor's vocal more mournful and imploring over a mid-paced breakbeat and synth track, book ended by digitally manipulated noise.

Broken Chanter doesn't let up in intensity, further fleshing out these themes on the robotic, incessant funk of Atrocity/Adverts/Idiocy and To The Victims They Call Citizens. On the former, MacGregor's takedown of how social media algorithms shape behaviour and society picks up on threads laid down elsewhere on the record. "How long until we eat ourselves, how long until there's nothing left" is sung in a call and response chorus between Printer and MacGregor, recalling Gang Of Four's slashing dynamics. The song is unflinching in its opprobrium, describing the moral dissonance in engaging with a media that doesn't differentiate between scenes of inhumane horror and inane commercials. What is this doing to us? asks the songwriter. The song's sonic sister, To The Victims They Call Citizens is similarly tight but saves its anger for totalitarianism and oppressive power structures. A reference to radical jazz pioneer Charles Mingus, it's Broken Chanter at their most passionate.

Perhaps some of the most the affecting work on This Could be Us, You, or Anybody Else however, are the moments of emotional clarity. On A Year Without Summer, a melodic synth refrain decorates a plaintive song full of beautiful lyrics. Speaking of the way grief seeps into every facet and crevice of life, MacGregor's emotional acuity is pointed. It's a song that does what all the best songs do: displays some vulnerability, inviting the listener in close before extending the hand of comradeship through the air. At the album's end, an eruption into a noise crescendo of guitar, synth and volcanic drums, we're provided with a fitting release for the tight mountain of emotions amassed through the album.

If Chorus Of Doubt was full of collectivist vitriol, Broken Chanter in 2026 flesh it out here with new emotional cadences and depth. Broken Chanter describes a present dystopia and tries to forge a way out for us, you and anybody else.

Note to editors: The capitalisation (or otherwise) of This Could be Us, You, or Anybody Else is deliberate to match the title of the Arpita Singh etching.