I’m thrilled to be able to write about this.. Possibly my favourite UK act of the past few years have today announced that their new album, Deaths and Entrances, will be released via Bella Union on May 18th. It’s been three long years since the release of My Latest Novel’s critically acclaimed debut Wolves but the band haven’t rested on their laurels. They have spent the past two years recording in the solitude of their studio in Greenock, Scotland which has been documented by regular blogs and progress reports on the bands myspace page.
Judging by the press release, it seems the quintet have evolved their twisted take on folk and post-rock to create a whirlwind of sounds and ideas. It states: “(Deaths and Entrances) consistently displays a remarkable inventiveness and artistry – breathtaking melodies, gorgeous harmonies, over-lapping vocals, sweeping arrangements, songs veering off on unusual tangents… And as lyricists, My Latest Novel truly live up to their name, easily matching their musical genius with their literary prowess”.
I really can’t wait for this. Wolves is one of few albums from recent years that I still re-visit frequently, and with each listen still unearths hidden depths. Truly a remarkable and exciting young bunch of musicians.
More news on the album as we get it, but in the meantime, here is My Latest Novel’s Gary Deveny talking about the new record:
“Deaths and Entrances was a title before it was an album – and a poem before it was a title… By Dylan Thomas… We loved how vast it was, and it seemed to sum up exactly what we wanted to do next. It gave us something to aim for. We wanted to “pull the thunderbolts, shut the sun, plunge, and mount our darkened keys”.
Many of the songs from the album are inspired by literature, specifically ‘Lanark’ by Alasdair Gray. The book is about life, death, dreams, nightmares, war, heaven and hell… Cycles… So is our album.
We were drawn into the illogical nature and conflicting thoughts of the anti-hero; the time travelling Billy Pilgrim; the cowardly Yossarian; and the main (unnamed) character in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.
During the writing process, we were holed up in an old pub, which had been turned into a rehearsal space in Greenock, our hometown. We had the only key, and were left to ourselves to create the album. The roof leaked, there were no windows, but it was amazing to have somewhere of our own to work together. We used it for the 628 days it took us to write the album.
We wrote a lot of the songs on the album at the same time, rather than one at a time. I think this makes it sound much more cohesive. It sounds like a band at a certain point in time. You end up developing your own language as a band; all these ideas were swirling around in our heads and in our room… and it feels spontaneous.
Space and time were important to us. So much so we mentioned it in ‘Hopelessly, Endlessly’. The thought that we didn’t need to think about anything other than what was happening within the four walls we were writing in… Like we’d hibernated into our own private world.
‘Lacklustre’ was probably the song which was most difficult to write. It was the first we started, and we finished it the day it was recorded. It’s about a resuscitation doll called Annie, which is based on the l’inconnue de la Seine – an unidentified woman who died in the river in the early 1900’s. We thought it was a tragic but beautiful story. A woman drowns, her face is immortalised in a plaster mask which is then used as a resuscitation doll to help save people from drowning. Deaths and Entrances.”
