Cam Cole kicks open a new era with the wild energy of ‘Get Up Ya Honky Tonk’

Cam Cole has built his reputation on making one person sound like an entire band collapsing into life at once. With guitar, foot percussion and a voice carrying equal amounts of grit and conviction, he has turned street performance into something closer to a controlled combustion. And on his latest single ‘Get Up Ya Honky Tonk’, that familiar force remains intact, but it is pushed into a broader and more colourful musical world.

The first single from his forthcoming album 'Lost In Creation', the track operates as an introduction to a more exploratory phase of his career. Its foundation is still rooted in the physical drive that has long defined his work: heavy rhythm, muscular guitar and the sense of a performance being propelled forward by instinct. Around that core, however, he allows the arrangement to become looser, stranger and more expansive.

There's a pronounced psychedelic streak running through the song, with swirling textures and soaring passages giving the track a sense of movement beyond its central stomp. The blues remains present, but it is pulled away from strict tradition and pushed towards something louder, dirtier and more unpredictable. Flashes of 70s rock, swampy groove and danceable guitar music collide without making the song feel overworked.

Yet the song is more considered than its rowdy exterior initially suggests. Its shifts in texture indicate an artist looking beyond the established novelty of the one-man-band format and concentrating instead on the full imaginative possibilities of his songwriting.

His career has expanded dramatically since his early days busking around Camden, taking him through international touring, television and documentary appearances. But what remains compelling is the sense that his music still begins with the same basic need to make enough noise to stop people in their tracks.

‘Get Up Ya Honky Tonk’ preserves that urgency all while refusing to stand still. It's loud, playful and deliberately excessive, but it also hints at a more ambitious creative direction beneath the surface.

As the opening glimpse of 'Lost In Creation', the single does exactly what it needs to do. It grabs us by the shoulders, drags us into the room and makes staying still feel almost impossible.