DJANGO DJANGO
Announce New Album “Doveland” out November 6th via Clouds Hill
Django Django announce their sixth studio album, Doveland, due for release on November 6 via Clouds Hill. Alongside the announcement, the band share the album’s first single, “Cameos” which serves as a reflective introduction to their most personal, warm and focused record to date.
The album takes its title from an online urban myth of a supposedly vanished midwest town called Doveland. Some believe they once lived there and even possess souvenirs as proof, yet Doveland appears on no maps. Explanations range from sinkholes to military experiments to collective amnesia. Most likely, the town never existed at all. While the mysterious settlement is not the direct subject of the album, the idea of searching for an impossible place became the catalyst for the record.
Doveland explores new ground, away from the restless, genre-hopping genius that has been their trademark since their Mercury-nominated, platinum-selling eponymous 2012 debut. “After four records where anything goes, we were getting bored” adds Maclean. “So we went back to basics.”
For this process the band undertook extended recording sessions in the German countryside alongside producer Nick McCarthy (founding member of Franz Ferdinand), and composer/ producer Polly Ester.
While the album is an exercise in imagination, conjuring songs from dreams and myths, these 12 tracks are also grounded in the lives of those who wrote them, in some of their most challenging experiences. During the years working on Doveland, Maclean lost his older sister, and Dixon lost his father.
“Cameos,” the single being shared with the announcement of Doveland, captures these themes of grief, isolation, memory and the fleeting nature of human connections. “Like a lot of the album, the lyrics are much more inward looking and about journeying through grief and how important people are only there for part of your story,” says Dixon.
He explains; “I was reading Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard and the lyric ‘cameos’ just felt like a relevant summarization of an individual playing a role in a wider story. It seemed to make sense in the Doveland world of someone looking for an idea of a place.”
The introduction to that soaring tone immediately consumes you, with the textures from the glorious guitar and the gentle yet determined percussive shuffles; Django Django deliver this meaningful and moving melody that simply grips the listener. Sweeping strings pierce through the immersive landscape, adding this distinguished intensity and a stark contrast to the delicate vocal harmonies. But the addition of strings, it serves a reminder that the addictive melody and the gentle vocal notes may give this tender touch; the lyrics, however, are truly raw and offer this deep and intimate complexity to the composition.
A band celebrated for their boundless invention and genre-defying spirit, Django Django have spent more than a decade pushing their sound into unexpected territory. With Doveland, they channel that adventurousness into their most focused statement yet.
Django Django are: Dave Maclean, Jim Dixon, Vincent Neff, Tommy Grace
The album artwork is a collaboration with mother and daughter mudlarking team Northern Mudlarks (https://www.instagram.com/northernmudlarks/ ). It consists of historical artifacts found by the pair along river banks in the Scottish borders, then curated into collections.
Tracklisting
1. Meteorite
2. Cameos
3. Still Life
4. Little Me (ft. Hak Baker)
5. Year Of The Snake
6. Quicksand
7. Left Adrift
8. So Heavy
9. Bird Song
10. Indigo Road
11. Dirty Hotel Blues
12. Feel Alright (ft. Max Pope)
Live dates
13th August, Color Festival, Italy
30th August supporting Scissor Sisters, Queen’s Park Recreation Ground, Glasgow, UK
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