With seven top 40 singles, six top 40 albums and over a million record sales worldwide, Turin Brakes return with a brand-new record -Spacehopper- out 23rd May via Cooking Vinyl. Produced by the band alongside Grammy-winning Guy Massey (with credits such as Kylie Minogue, Ed Sheeran and Spiritualized), Spacehopperis their first new music in over three years and marks the 10th studio album from Turin Brakes, a big milestone for a band who released their debut album over 24 years ago -The Mercury Prize nominated 'The Optimist LP' which catapulted them into the mainstream and achieved Gold status in the UK.

They are a band that understands the art of longevity and Spacehopper promises to be a worthy edition to a rich and sonically diverse catalogue of albums, finding the South London 4-piece in a reflective mood... “We deliberately went back to Konk Studios where we made The Optimist LP, having stayed away for 25 years,” says Olly Knights. “In some ways to connect to the source but also to be who we are now in that amazing room. It felt like some deep invisible forces were being moved around. The new record is totally its own thing; there are little nods to the debut, but it’s a different beast. It can never be as simple and perfect as the debut, so we didn’t try; we backed ourselves

“We honestly don’t normally get self-reflective but the whole album 10 thing definitely made us want to play with everything that throws up. The dreams, what worked out, what didn’t, the regrets, the nice surprises... It just seemed like a good moment to admit we’re inon our own legacy in a way.”

Opening the album is the rose-tinted nostalgia of ‘The Message,’ reflecting on simpler times of FM radios, roaming around on bikes, and getting bored when it’s raining outside. Similarly, the easy going classic rock feel of the title track (and first single) throws back to those days of childlike abandon and playing in the summer sun. Then there's the plaintive ‘Almost’ –“one for all the bands that didn’t quite make it,” says Olly, addressing the pitfalls of ‘fifteen seconds of fame.’

Long-time fans of Turin Brakes (of whom there are many) will be happy that their familiar warm and harmonious sound is still present throughout this album. With tracks like the off-kilter ‘Lazy Bones’ (‘I’m pretty sure it’s about extraterrestrials discovering the old bones of humanity,’ says Olly), the urging drive behind ‘Lullaby’ and the soaring chorus of ‘Horizon’ –a future live highlight for sure.

Yet as previous albums have displayed, Turin Brakes are happy to dip their toe into other realms of music and do so once more for album 10. ‘Pays to be Paranoid’ is an infuriated alt-country stomp picking apart our increasingly online society, while Olly states that the swirling ‘Silence and Sirens’ tries to capture the feeling of “a lot of intense and lonely dark nights of the soul.” There’s some dabbling with psychedelia on the gently hypnotic ‘Today’, but it’s on the final track ‘What’s Underneath’ where everyone leans into this unabashedly for a 6-and-a-half-minute jam about self-depersonalisation, complete with a ‘face-melting’ solo from Gale Paridjanian.

However, the album highlight has to be the stunning Americana ditty ‘Old Habits’ -these may die hard while time still progresses, but being here after so many years has to count for something. “This band is the old habit,” says Olly.“We are still here, our fans are still listening, the ripples from The Optimist LP are still growing.

More about the band
 

Turin Brakes, founded by childhood friends Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian, is today made up of Knights, Paridjanian, and long-term collaborators Rob Allum and Eddie Myer. They released their Mercury-nominated debut The Optimist LP in March 2001 and followed it up in 2003 with their most commercially successful album -Ether Song. Produced by Tony Hoffer (Beck, Supergrass, The Kooks) it hit the Top 5 in the UK Official Album Charts. Arguably more sonically adventurous than their debut it features the Top 5 hit single ‘Pain Killer (Summer Rain)’. Some of Turin Brakes’ personal highlights include playing the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury before Radiohead’s 2003 headline set, appearing on Top of the Pops, selling out venues like the Hammersmith Apolloand Brixton Academy, and hearing Robert Planton the radio reveal himself as a fan. Over the years, they have opened for artists such as David Grayand Coldplay, while their music has soundtracked American TV on shows like The OC, which played their song ‘Rain City’, and Designated Survivorwith ‘Save You’. Labelled in the beginning as a band of the early 2000s’ ‘New Acoustic Movement’, Turin Brakes have continued to evolve beyond their formative folk-rock/guitar-pop glory without totally abandoning the music that made them -doing so has given them a loyal fanbase which continues to grow to this day. With something for listeners both old and new, Spacehopperfittingly marks the start of a new chapter for Turin Brakes, one that’s been 10 albums in the making.

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