DESPERATE JOURNALIST – ‘SATELLITE’
Fierce Panda Records
Release Date: 11th January 2019- Out Now
Much-loved
The second single is ‘Satellite’. Like its predecessor it rockets along on the back of Rob Hardy’s starstruck guitar – just check that solo! – and a sensationally impassioned vocal delivery from Jo Bevan. In short, ‘Satellite’ sees the quartet (see also: drummer Caz Hellbent and bassist Simon Drowner) further hone their crushingly sensitive alt.rock sound so it is definitively, defiantly bigger, shinier and more melodic than ever before.
The aforementioned third album is due for release on February 22nd on a playful pawful of formats, including CD, heavyweight vinyl and limited edition coloured vinyl. If the title conveys a sense of wide-eyed ambition then the music on ‘In Search Of The Miraculous’ fits the plot perfectly, featuring ten tracks fizzing with creative passion, giant choruses, heroic solos and poetic intensity. “I never liked your favourite band,” sighs Bevan at one gently cutting point in ‘Jonatan’. Warning: this album contains love songs, anti-love songs and other songs wandering about, lost in an in-between-daze. It’s a bit complicated. Or in the words of singer Jo…
“I’m not going to beat around the bush: the album has a fairly high concept (or perhaps pretentious) starting point. it’s titled ‘In Search of the Miraculous’ after the artist Bas Jan Ader’s several works centered round his idea to sail across the Atlantic in the smallest craft ever to do so, as a piece of performance art. That action was intended as a culmination of his previous efforts in which he tried to figure out how to express the old Romantic idea of the Sublime in a modern art context, which involved various emotive but oblique actions such as documented falling, confessional crying, walking around his hometown of Los Angeles at night searching for an unnamed person whilst listening to a pop song, and reading aloud from an article about a boy falling off Niagara Falls – man clearly after my own dramatic, melancholic heart.
“Because I imbue everything in my life with huge portentous OTT meaning and because I was going through a big new beginning in my personal life which involved a bit of a leap of faith, these ideas particularly resonated with me when we were writing the record (and they still do). When Bas Jan Ader did attempt his trip across the ocean he ended up lost at sea, which was personally tragic but which does in a way give the artwork even more weight – that old idea of the Sublime is (as far as I understand it at least) this elemental perfection of extreme feeling that by definition can’t be fully achieved or realised by humans, only by nature – and the way he documented it proved how much of a powerful and brave/naive idea it was for him to pursue. So this is me applying my personal drama and internal feelings to that.
“It’s an album about the terrifying beauty of hope, and the excitement of possibility. And love. Because it always does come back to that really, if I’m honest.”
Last seen in London Town selling out Oslo in the spring of 2018, over the past five years Desperate Journalist have dazzled and delighted all and sundry with two excellent albums – ‘Desperate Journalist’ and ‘Grow Up’ – plus two effervescent standalone EPs and a raft of riotously enervating live shows running from The Scala to Stuttgart and back again. Having indiepopped up recently supporting the old school likes of The Wedding Present and Marion Desperate Journalist have confirmed these live shows here:
LIVE
18 Jan – Sheffield – Record Junkee
19 Jan – Coventry – The Tin at The Coal Vaults
9 Feb – Madrid, Spain – Wurlitzer Ballroom
14th March – Birmingham – Hare and Hounds
15th March – Manchester – Deaf Institute
16th March – Glasgow – Broadcast
21st March – Bristol – Exchange
22nd March – Nottingham – Bodega
23rd March – Leeds – Lending Room
5th April – London – The Garage
8th May – Hamburg, Hafenklang
9th May – Cologne, Blue Shell
10th May – Stuttgart, Merlin
11th May – Munster, Gleiss 22
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