Album and Single Launch

Three new releases coming your way, courtesy of your ever loyal Hope & Social.

It’s nearly here. At long last and after two years of work, our fifth studio album “FEEL” is finished. Done, signed off, gone to print, gone to press… [gulps] complete! So complete in fact, that we have release dates!

“Sunrise Laughing” – The Single

We’re brimming with pride and excitement to announce that “Sunrise Laughing”, our first ever Single will be out this month, on Friday the 30th of September. The single will be released as a digital download, and album pre-order along with the first of our nine commissioned music videos for the album FEEL.

The video for “Sunrise Laughing” is being made by the amazing Virpi Kettu, who you may know via her amazing work for Aardman Animations, Radiohead, Ron Sexsmith amongst a host of others. Her showreel is beautiful, and we felt that her style and feel [pun intended] really marries well with Sunrise Laughing. It’s the first of nine videos for the nine tracks on the album too.

A sonic-smorgasbord of a single, “Sunrise Laughing” is as light, bright and fresh as it is big, ballsy and bold. Sweet, summery and non-too-serious. A celebration of a childlike world view, of plastic trombones, ukuleles, and spinning-down record players… and of the great soul records we loved when we were growing up, Sunrise Laughing will be the first taste of what our first studio album since our 2012 album “All Our Dancing Days” sounds like.

“Feel” – The Album

Throughout our new album FEEL, we hope you’ll be able to hear us more fully embracing the use of the recording studio as an instrument in its own right than we ever have before. While we Feel [coughs] that it’s still unmistakably Us, there’s a lot that’s new in how we made this record, and we think you’ll hear that. We hope you’ll be surprised, and we hope you’ll hear some elements that remain true to our lineage.

Where much of our previous work has been built on the old-school foundations of getting together in a room and playing, “Feel” was always intended to be something of a departure. A more abstract approach; layering, adding, taking away. Along with the familiar, the guitars, pianos, organs, brass, bass, drums and voices, you’ll hear analogue synths, 90’s handclaps… And coffee mugs. And ukuleles. Miniature drum machines. Numerous home keyboards. A concert xylophone (rescued from a garden). A sampled elephant. A helicopter. And More Cowbell than we’ve ever used on a record.

From the plastic Spector wall of sound of “Tommy Gun”, to “South Facing” – a Yorkshire Casio/Portasound Ensemble, via the schizoid chamber pop of “London”’, through the carnival that is “Come What May”, to the sugary sunshine pop of lead-single, “Sunrise Laughing”, FEEL takes a similar melodic approach we’ve taken before, wraps it in an 80’s sensibility, makes it bigger, smaller, wilder, fresher, dusts it with Talking Heads urgency and doffs it’s flat cap in a salute to David Bowie.

The album FEEL is dedicated to our fallen friend John Wheeler. A brother in music, and an inspiration.

TOUR – “Come on out be yourself again”

We’re bringing the circus to town. Between the 18th Sept and 12th Nov, we’re heading to Hull, Leeds, Hartlepool, London, Coventry, Shoreham, Manchester, Blakey Ridge, Harrogate and back to York. Be amongst the first to hear us work out how the hell we’re gonna play this music live on our “FEEL – The Album Tour” HERE.