Jamie Lenman has announced a new mini-album called ‘King of Clubs’.
The follow-up to his 2018 covers-album-of-sorts ‘Shuffle’, which featured film excerpts, readings and the like, the record will be released on 25th September via Big Scary Monsters, preceded by new single ‘The Road To Right’.
“This is a song I was writing before we started ‘Shuffle’,” he says, “so I shelved it when I realised that was going to be all covers. Then by the time I was touring that album, I wanted to play something new and ‘Road’ was just sitting there ready to go. It got a great reception, maybe because it’s quite a ‘traditional Jamie Lenman song’, if there is such a thing. People just like new music, really. Lyrically it’s very introspective, similar to the stuff on Devolver. It deals with the concept of ‘finding yourself’ and what to do if you actually manage that, only to discover what you really want is to get as far away from yourself as you can.”
Of the album, he adds: “I didn’t want to make another full album straight after ‘Shuffle’, I wanted to give people more time to digest that, but I did want to get back to the studio fairly quickly and record something original just to remind people I’m still a songwriter first and foremost. I was wary of repeating what we’d done with (one off single featuring Justine Jones from Employed To Serve) ‘Long Gone’ coming after (2016 album ‘Devolver’), so I tried to make an EP instead of a single – but by the time I got there, I’d written so much material on the road and in rehearsals we ended up with enough for a mini album. I’ve always loved the format, so many of my favourite records are seven or eight tracks long, I think it’s a perfect package. It’s the musical version of a novella, like Conrad’s ‘Heart Of Darkness’ or Waugh’s ‘The Loved One’, which I was actually reading at the time of recording. It’s a dirty, dark-sounding record based on uncomfortable, conflicting emotions.”
Give ‘The Road To Right’ a listen below.
