Elbow announce new album, Flying Dream 1, for November

(Image credit: Loudhailer)

Elbow have announced that they’ll release their new studio album, Flying Dream 1, through Polydor Records on November 19.

The band wrote Flying Dream 1 remotely in their home studios before coming together at the empty Brighton Theatre Royal to perfect, perform, and record the songs. A film crew covered the final recording sessions for a forthcoming documentary.

“Hiring a two hundred year old theatre that has never in its history been closed for so long was something that could only be done under the circumstances... nice to turn it on its head in that way," says singer Guy Garvey. "Recording in a splendid generous space with no audience was something that throws an anchor in the times that the record was made in.”

During the first lockdown the band recorded the ‘elbowrooms’ sessions and uploaded them to YouTube. They used that impetus to begin writing individually, sending each other little love notes over the weeks and months, and these sketches gradually became songs.

“We realised we were making a record free of the usual creative guidelines,” Garvey adds. “We love patient, quiet, whole albums like the last Talk Talk records. John Martyn's Sold Air and Bless The Weather, PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire, Chet Baker Sings, the Blue Nile’s Hats. Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. We’ve always written songs like this, but it felt natural to make an album that focuses on the gentler side of our music. There have been challenges, but through them writing together remotely was a lifeline. It’s bruised and wistful, nostalgic, and thankful. We’re so lucky that all our family and friends are safe. It’s about that love.”

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.