Brown Horse are excited to announce their second album, ‘All The Right Weaknesses’, out 4th April on Loose Music. The latest single, “Dog Rose”, is out now.
Road tested and road worn, the band tracked these eleven songs in a whirlwind week of live takes at Sickroom Studios in Norfolk following a multi-month European tour. Building on the stark twang of their debut album, ‘Reservoir’, ‘All The Right Weaknesses’ sees an energised Brown Horse meld slacker-rock, folk and alt-country – equal parts Lucinda Williams, Jason Molina, The Breeders and Silver Jews. Weary, wry and disarmingly honest, these songs flash a smile at the dark and strange. With contributions from the band’s multiple songwriters, the record is a patchwork far greater than the sum of its parts.
Following the release of the new album, Brown Horse will play a run of shows in the UK and Europe, including dates at Rough Trade in Bristol, Rich Mix in London and Salford’s Sounds From The Other City festival.
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About ‘All The Right Weaknesses’
Arriving off the back of a busy touring schedule which included sets at Green Man Festival, Latitude and the main stage at End of the Road, Brown Horse’s second album is characterised by an intense energy born from night after night on tour playing full-band shows. As the band explain:
“We’d been on the road in Europe for over two months by the time we arrived at the studio to start recording. We were pretty much constantly together, spending hours in the van listening to the same music, exploring unfamiliar places and playing shows almost every night. That was sort of the creative justification for playing so many dates ahead of recording, to find that level of coherence.”
“We didn’t need to pay for rehearsal space,” they continued, “we rotated new songs in the setlist and learned them on our rare days off. We’d slept on floors and in construction sites, caught midnight ferries, driven a Ford Transit past incredible Norwegian fjords, and been towed from a snowbank in the middle of nowhere by a man in shorts and flip flops. It was pretty cool to be that tuned into each other, and have that shared experience going into recording an album.”
While the songs on ‘Reservoir’ took shape over years of intimate, stripped-back pub gigs, ‘All The Right Weaknesses’ holds nothing back, building a yowling wall of distorted guitars, accordion, banjo and pedal steel, at once familiar and difficult to place. The songs are thoughtful and delicately arranged, but the record rocks harder than ever.
‘All The Right Weaknesses’ is a little more eclectic than their first offering, representing a collective and reflecting the band’s experience of touring new places. It also incorporates one of the most enchanting elements of their live sets, the way the band members swap instruments on-stage, which has been carried into the arrangements and recording.
Listening to the record has a feel of switching TV channels – there’s a real range of genres and approaches across the eleven tracks, but the album never lacks cohesion. Strong thematic connections which might prove familiar to fans of the first record are woven throughout. Perhaps the band are confronting new ghosts here.
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LIVE DATES
11th April – Blue Heart Festival, Alkmaar, NL
12th April – Heartland Festival, Hengelo, NL
13th April – Down By The River Festival, Venlo, NL
23rd April – Rough Trade, Bristol
24th April – Rich Mix, London
25th April – Jericho Tavern, Oxford
26th April – Green Door Store, Brighton
30th April – Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
1st May – Hug & Pint, Glasgow
2nd May – Three Tanners Bank, North Shields
3rd May – Headrow House, Leeds
4th May – Sounds From The Other City, Salford
5th May – Hare & Hounds 2, Birmingham