THE BLINDERS
Announce details of their new album, Beholder & share first single, ‘Brakelights’
Album out 1st March 2024 on Funhouse Recordings / EMI.
U.K. and EU headline tour in March 2024.
Watch the video for ‘Brakelights’ HERE
The Blinders make their return today with ‘Brakelights’, the first track to be taken from their forthcoming third album, Beholder, which is released on Friday 1st March 2024 via Funhouse Recordings/ EMI.
The perfect introduction to their new album ‘Brakelights’ drips with a dark atmospheric intensity which equally lurks across the albums other 9 tracks.
The Doncaster via Manchester 4-piece’s previous albums were championed by the likes of 6Music and Radio 1 and the last couple of years have seen them make appearances at the Glastonbury and Benicassim festivals amongst others and play sold-out shows, including one at the Manchester Academy in their adopted home-town where they packed in almost 3000 fans.
The track listing of the 10-track album, produced by Adam ‘Atom’ Greenspan & Nick Launey and recorded in LA in early 2023 is as follows:
1. Ceremony2. Brakelights3. While I’m Still Young4. At Any Hand But Hers5. Always6. Iggy Got Camaro7. Waterfalls Of Venice8. Nocturnal Skies9. Swallowing Static10. All I Need
One of the most exciting live bands out there right now, they recently played two explosive, sold-out low-key warm up shows at the Dublin Castle in London and The White Hotel in Manchester and have announced a run of headline shows in early spring next year.
With a visceral urgency live to more than match the likes of contemporaries IDLES or Fontaines DC, they take their brooding and intense live show, which recalls the dark atmospherics of The Bad Seeds or peak-period Bunnymen, to the following venues in March:
06.03.24 – Rescue Rooms – NOTTINGHAM
07.03.24 – Thekla – BRISTOL
08.03.24 – KOKO – LONDON
09.03.24 – Castle & Falcon – BIRMINGHAM
11.03.24 – SWG3- GLASGOW
12.03.24 – Wardrobe – LEEDS
14.03.24 – New Century Hall – MANCHESTER
18.03.24 – Le Supersonic – PARIS
20.03.24 – Trix Bar Club – ANTWERP
21.03.24 – Molotow Skybar – HAMBURG
22.03.24 – Privatclub – BERLIN
24.03.24 – Blue Shell – COLOGNE
25.03.24 – Paradiso – AMSTERDAM
Tickets for the U.K. shows go on general sale on Friday 3rd November via www.theblindersofficial.com
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The notion of perspective has been at the forefront of The Blinders’ minds of late, vanishing points of the heart and soul giving depth and texture to their Nick Launay and ‘Atom’ Greenspan co-produced third album, the aptly titled, Beholder which follows their politically-charged debut, 2018’s Columbia, and 2020’s seductively sinister Fantasies Of A Stay at Home Psychopath.
“I’d think about what I was seeing in my head listening to the songs. And it was always a character, and I’d describe them as the beholder. That sense of seeing is believing and understanding through what it is you’ve seen. I think the record is about leaving adolescence and becoming an adult, so your experience and your perspective change,” explains singer / guitarist Thomas Haywood.
A record born out of a period of flux within the band; their previous drummer left the group in 2020, Thomas ‘Cass’ Castrey who used to be the band’s tech on the road took over the drum stool full time, while keyboard player Johnny James was also recruited as Haywood and Doncaster school friend and fellow Blinders’ founder, bassist Charlie McGough, realised the interruption in their band’s life opened more possibilities than the doors it closed.
“It was an opportunity to expand. Cass and Johnny joining massively changed the kinds of songs we could write. There was so much more room musically, so it was a really, really exciting time. It’s been like a pendulum; we’ve gone into the chaos of upheaval and now it’s swung back as we’ve found a way to come together,” said Haywood.
As the line-up solidified – the group were also aided on this album by former Cabbage and Twisted Wheel guitarist Eoghan Clifford – The Blinders engaged in an intense period of demoing as many song ideas as they could fully realise, as they began to forge and understand the new musical relationships that were blossoming within the group. With over 20 songs written at their Manchester base at Brunswick Mill and with Nick Launay and ‘Atom’ Greenspan in place to produce the album in Los Angeles, The Blinders decamped to a stripped-out cottage in rural Wales to drill down and create a final, focused demo that they could take to America as a blueprint of Beholder.
“The Wales trip was tight,” explains McGough. “When you’ve got a lot of songs you don’t feel like you know any of them too well, and you have to find the record within them. That time brought everything together. We sat down on the last night of that trip and it became apparent quickly we all felt there were seven or eight core songs that had to be on the record. That trip was really important because although we recorded in LA, it doesn’t sound like an LA record. The sound was defined in Manchester and subsequently that cottage.”
`While Beholder shares a frenetic energy with their previous albums there’s a new depth both lyrically and musically to the album. Launay and Greenspan’s astute rock production adds wider atmospheres and sophisticated textures and lyrically the band effortlessly marry angry social observations with a personal desperation which sees Beholder sweep rollercoaster-like through minimal then maximalist twists and turns.
“What drew me to join the band was its intensity. There’s two poles to it,” explains keyboard player Johnny of his personal Blinders debut. “You’ve got this carnal, ferocious side driven by pure visceral energy and then you’ve got something much more considered, more brooding or menacing but in a beautiful way. When I joined, I really wanted to lean into that latter side, dial up the atmospheres and communicate with the ghosts in the attic.”
Yet at the heart of the album lies a sense of change and growth, both as a band and personally.
“I think a big part of the album is loss, and loss is a big part of growing out of childhood and into adulthood, right?” says Haywood. “You experience death for the first time, especially of loved ones who helped to sculpt the person you are. That is life, it’s what everyone is expected to deal with. Being able to take a step back from it now, I realise the lyrics are written from the perspective of someone moving through that change. And songwriting-wise, darkness is really easy to tap into, musically and lyrically. There’s just something powerful and emotive that speaks to you in a way nothing else can or will – especially when you’ve got it all going on.”
With all these shifting dynamics – line-up, sounds, lyrics – there is the potential danger that some groups might lose sight of their identity or succumb to innovation for innovation’s sake, yet Beholder’s triumph is that while it has truly moved The Blinders forward, redefining their parameters and possibilities, on a fundamental level the record remains true to their core artistic values as a band. Perspectives may have changed for Beholder, but The Blinders’ instincts remain true.
“I can’t think of a better way of explaining this album other than saying, it felt right. Everything just felt right.” declares Haywood. “A lot of these songs share a very similar emotional language to our earlier stuff. We haven’t left that, but we can go to other places now too.”
Perspectives may change, but The Blinders’ vision is joy to behold.
For The Blinders information
My life is a soundtrack, i track my life through music, photography is my passion, my escape, my expression. Without both i have pieces missing, thankfully i’m blessed and get to combine both.
Born in Manchester, lived in Australia for 22 years where i was heavily involved in the Australian Music Industry, firstly in bands (Singer) and then managing bands (all original), I moved back to the UK, Wales specifically 10 years ago
