Contempt for Others, released on Folklore is the first single from Mock Deer’s Perceptions EP, due for release later in the year. In it we find singer-songwriter Ricky Damiani in both reflective and confrontational mode, squaring up to his frustration with the contemporary challenges of coexistence.

Behind its delicate, cynical surface Contempt for Others gives voice to a resigned and weary heart. Damiani muses on societal ostracism and self-righteousness in loose, almost crooning verses (he admits he’s always harboured a desire to sing like a Sinatra or Bennett), a style which contrasts well with the defeat in the lyrics: “It’s not the dream that we thought it could be / We broke society, perhaps? / They told us what to do and say / It didn’t matter anyway / We wrote the part but not the facts.”

But as the track opens out into thick guitars and synths, we realise the idealism of his earlier work is still present; there is some fight left. The vocals in the unapologetically rousing chorus recall a stripped-back Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, or even Arcade Fire.

Contempt for Others, like the other three songs on the EP, was written in 2019 and laid aside while world events took focus from creative projects and superseded any non-pandemic subject matter. Now, as the world begins to adjust, the topics with which Damiani was occupied are reframed by the changes. Consequently the tracks – recorded live on an Italian mountainside in February 2020 with Canadian band The Burning Hell (who feature here) – benefit from a lo-fi freshness that has survived the wait.