Cable Ties – "Self-Made Man"

Cable Ties’ sophomore album, Far Enough, is coming out next month. They’ve shared two songs from it so far — “Tell Them Where To Go” way back in 2018 and “Sandcastles” more recently — and today they’re releasing another one, “Self-Made Man.” It’s a clever dismantling a person who got where they are because the economic situation they happened to be born into.

“No, he don’t need no one else/ ‘Cause he got here by himself,” Jenny McKechnie sings. “And he didn’t dig that ditch/ But he’s the one who made him rich?” It actually has a lot in common thematically with another new song out today, U.S. Girls’ “4 American Dollars,” which also interrogates the idea picking yourself up by your bootstraps.

“The Self-Made Man created wealth through the exploitation other people and abuse public resources,” McKechnie explains in a statement. “He doesn’t care about the suffering others because — in his eyes — he got what he deserved through hard work, and they have not. It is inconvenient for the Self-Made Man to analyse systems oppression which he has manipulated for his own gain. Those things are just a distraction from hard work and getting what you want.”

Watch a video for the track below.

Far Enough is out 3/27 Merge / Poison City (AUS/NZ). Pre-order it here.