Glasgow’s There Will Be Fireworks have announced details of Summer Moon, the band’s third full-length effort and their first album in a decade. The new new record follows their second album The Dark, Dark Bright, initially released in November of 2013
and reissued on vinyl earlier this year.
Summer Moon is available to pre-order now, both digitally and on limited edition vinyl via the band’s Bandcamp page here. The album is preceded by the haunting lead single ‘Classic Movies’, a simmering. sad and devotional song to soundtrack revelations of the wee small hours, it’s the first taster of Summer Moon which is available across streaming platforms. The new track is also accompanied by a striking video, made by filmmaker Kris Boyle, watch it below.
“More than a half-decade in the making, work on Summer Moon initially began back in 2016,
the band crafting the thirteen songs that make up the record in the years since. Buoyed by a
collective determination and growing confidence, Summer Moon features the band’s most
dynamic work to-date, with every aspect of their character pushed to soaring new heights.”
The first TWBF album to be written remotely, Summer Moon was pieced together over time
and distance, with the five-piece trading demos and arrangements via email over the years.
This slow, considered songwriting approach massively impacted the finished product, the
band iterating on the songs for far longer than before, carefully crafting an album that would
finally be pulled together at Gargleblast Studios in Hamilton, Scotland, alongside
engineer/producer Andy Miller (Mogwai, De Rosa, Life Without Buildings).
Where the lyrics on The Dark, Dark Bright found Nicholas McManus on the cusp of
adulthood, Summer Moon finds him in suitably reflective mood, ten years older and in the
throes of marriage, fatherhood, love and death, and the weight of all those is portrayed
beautifully throughout the album.
A sense of melancholy is sharpened by the band’s musical progression. With more than 15
years’ experience under their belts, and an increased confidence in their abilities, the playing
is more assured and exploratory than ever before. Analogue synthesizers – including a vintage
Italian string synthesizer – add new depths to their sound, while additional guitars, pedal
effects and the Cairn String Quartet lend the record a sense of musical freedom that feels
resoundingly alive.
Nicholas McManus on Summer Moon:
“The Dark, Dark Bright was written on the cusp of real adulthood, as we were entering the world
of work and leaving home. Summer Moon has been written from a perspective that’s ten years
older still – with wives and kids and mortgages and careers, and people close to you starting to die. there is a weight brought by all of that, I think. Love is a big theme – like, serious scary love in all its terrifying power. And also a feeling of melancholy or listlessness which is difficult to explain or capture but which I think comes with the territory of getting older. But most important is hope and more than hope – the acknowledgement that life is actually good or that it can be made good. The summer moon is supposed to encapsulate a lot of that, as a symbol of a nostalgic past but also as a promise for the future.”
Adam Ketterer on lead single Classic Movies:
“Classic Movies was always the most powerful and weird song for me, from the very early writing stages. Nicky’s part sounds simple but then Gibran comes in, at what feels like the halfway point of a repetition, with a creepy guitar line that flips the verse backwards. I never quite knew where the first beat of anyone’s part was – even my own – and I really enjoyed that. I think it makes for quite an uneasy, uncanny listening experience because it was such a disorientating experience writing it.”
Nicholas McManus on the band’s return:
“I think we are all different (better!) musicians than we were 10 years ago. Our preferences and
influences have evolved, our habits have changed. We are much more purposeful in our
arrangements. If we’re going to go heavy now, we’re going to go heavier than we ever have
before, but it needs to be earned. The song needs to merit it. I’ve noticed changes in my voice too.
I am a Glaswegian living in Glasgow and that’s in the music implicitly and sometimes explicitly.
I’ve rattled around this city long enough now to see bands and venues and scenes and whole
subcultures come and go and – rightly or wrongly – I have the sense that we are writing music in
that ecosystem, and in a sort of informal lineage of Glasgow bands. There are references on the
album to the Blue Nile, Teenage Fanclub, Lloyd Cole and others. That’s not to say we need to
be parochial or sound a certain way; it’s just to say that I think we have an appreciation of our
context.
There’s definitely an element of nostalgia in this album – of remembering the past and nights out
with friends as part of our own little corner of our own little scene. And the city was an important
part of that; the basement venues and bars and clubs where all those experiences happen.”
