Announces debut album, 2013
Released 26th February via Moshi Moshi
Live dates inc. headline London show in January
Watch the video for ‘How To Recognise A Work of Art’
In Italy he lived differently. “I’d go out every day, walking for hours, go to churches, just to see paintings,” he says. He spoke no Italian but lived with Romans, joining them for late night dinners and early morning drinking, and in that way of living he found “There was this spirit – that again I’d felt in Byron’s poetry – that was sweet but also really resilient.”
Returning to London, he decided to set about recording. Five of the songs he had conceived as orchestral pieces, and so he assembled a 30-strong orchestra “out of friends, and friends of friends of friends,”. There was a saxophonist, a bassoonist, a clarinetist, some classical players, jazz, brass, a French harpist, and Lucy Mercer from Stealing Sheep on drums.
Over the course of a day they recorded the main body of the tracks Olivia, Return to Life, Passionate Friend, Rome and Be Soft, the songs later embellished with further additions – a community choir in Glasgow, field recordings of birds, three trombonists recorded in a cemetery, among them. “I wanted to make something that felt right to me and expressed my interests, which are classical music and rock‘n’roll music, and films, and nature and karaoke, and tacky stuff,” Jones says. “And I wanted to capture that feeling in Rome of high culture and low-brow stuff all mixed together.”
What Italy gave him was the notion of a “rich internal life” to be explored: the quiet contemplation of a church at midday, the wonder of sculptural form, a desire for grace, epic poetry and baroque violin. The collection of songs that it led to are as various, unusual, and contrary as all of the pieces that make up a person. It is the sound of a young man discovering just who he is.
Friday 22nd January – HEBDEN BRIDGE – Trades Club (Caught by the River Festival)
Friday 12th February – CARDIFF – From Now On w/ Julia Holter
2013 will be released 26th February on Moshi Moshi.
Preorder:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/2013/id1056875079
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