After a long hiatus, Kate Jackson, former frontwoman of The Long Blondes is back with her debut solo album, British Road Movies, due 20th May via Hoo Ha Records. She has also announced two live dates backed by her band The Wrong Moves. Kate has shared a teaser track ‘Metropolis’ featuring the production and guitar skills of Bernard Butler (Suede, The Tears); it’s a grand, Spector dappled pop song that paints vivid pictures of life speeding past the car window, ‘This City pulls me to pieces’ goes her closing refrain. Listen here:
These ten songs were conceived as cinematic starting points, movie titles with lyrical story-boards. With British Road Movies Jackson paints scenes and tells stories, paying homage to the colour, weather and architecture seen from every car windscreen.
Each new song was conceived as a movie title. “The road, much written about in American popular song, and an American cinematic staple, is often ignored in British culture,” Jackson explains. “As an island our roads lead somewhere far too quickly to hold adventure. We are not the land of Jack Kerouac but of Antiques Road Trip. But who is to say our roads can’t be cinematic?” She cites filmmaker Chris Petit’s Radio On film from 1979, Patrick Keiller’s Robinson trilogy and the writing of Will Self and Iain Sinclair as touch points.
Writing with Butler came very naturally, “We initially bonded over a shared love of Bowie, The Fall, Neil Young and Brian Eno, and quickly found that songwriting flowed freely between us”.
In July and August 2015, Jackson was artist in residence at Smiths Row contemporary art gallery in Bury St Edmunds, where she started a new series of paintings entitled, British Road Movies. Always envisioned as a multimedia project, these paintings became a visual pairing to the new songs, with a number of them lending themselves to the artwork for the album and subsequent singles. An exhibition will be held in London around the release of the album.
Backed by her band The Wrong Moves, Jackson has also announced a performance at this year’s Great Escape Festival and an instore at Rough Trade East:
19th May – The Great Escape, Brighton
20th May – Rough Trade East, London (7pm)
