24 February 2024
Newsdesk
Another Sky are excited to release ‘Swirling Smoke’, the final track taken from their upcoming album Beach Day (due out on March 1st via Republic Records). The band will be heading out on a run of intimate record store dates on album release week. All live dates are outlined below.
Catrin Vincent says of ‘Swirling Smoke’, “as a teen, I used to go to this club called ‘The Colly’ to sit on this abandoned staircase and just scream. The music was so loud that nobody could hear me. I didn’t feel able to express frustration in real life, so it felt like the only place I could let it out without hurting someone else.
Our second record is all about being heard, letting that anger come to light and dealing with it for the first time. Max made this electronic loop that reminded me of the last and only time I went to clubs, and I instantly laid down some piano chords and remembered being eighteen again. Everyone laid down their parts, then we all pieced together the song after that.
The song itself is a mirror. “I see you” isn’t really about the other person, it’s about me. It’s about the realisation that everyone is an actor in each other’s plays from childhood, and that how you react says more about you than it does anyone else.”
In the accompanying video the band’s Art Director Darina was inspired by ‘Aftersun’, where the father character dances in a club in strobe lighting, which is revealed to be this liminal space in the daughter’s mind.
Catrin Vincent says, “I never, ever danced in clubs. This is the first time I have ever tried to “dance”. It’s supposed to be a bit disjointed, a bit lonely and weird”.
Darina also captured the album artwork for the band’s sophomore album, ‘Beach Day’ on the South Coast of England, showing the band lost at sea, leaning on each other for comfort.
About Beach Day
At this moment in time for Another Sky, there are maybe three certainties in this life: death, taxes, and rage. White-hot rage that takes you inwards, deeper into yourself, your fears, all the hidden truths you desperately tried to keep quiet while finding yourself.
With the band’s sophomore album Beach Day, that feeling opens a doorway to the most confident, fully formed and forthright version of Another Sky so far. Frontwoman Catrin Vincent points out the relationship between anger and freedom on this record. “If you don't move through anger, it'll calcify into bitterness, and it's not worth it,” she says, “but it’s about having the freedom to find and feel that anger. How can you move through something you don’t even know is there?”.
The album gave Vincent the opportunity to go more personal than ever – Another Sky has always supported and valued their front-woman’s vulnerability, but here it’s at its rawest. “Wait, why did I do this? Wait, why did I do this in the first place?” Vincent sings in the propulsive, almost euphoric climax of ‘Death of the Author’, one of many tracks on the album wrestling with a lack of control and surrender to the circumstances that great wreckage leave you with, whether you like it or not. The least you can do is make something of the rubble.
That rubble was rebuilt in the crypt of a church for Another Sky: the Covid years saw the band’s former studio flooded, as well as the painful consequences of a personal betrayal for all the band members (“all I had to do was be a good view as I fell from the sky you built for me,” Vincent spits on the explosive and impossibly direct lead single ‘Psychopath’). Both huge blows razed what you could perhaps call the first version of Another Sky to the ground. They needed a new space, and a new perspective, so they called out to their friends to help. “Does anyone know of any community spaces?”, they asked, and a Vicar, an avid Idles fan desperate to help some musicians, answered.
They built the crypt-based studio from scratch Another Sky, with help from guitarist Jack Gilbert’s builder Dad, where Gilbert produced much of the album himself – costing less and giving the band infinitely more freedom to take back control of their own narrative.
The anger and the fight is real, and it’s everything – but that doesn’t mean it always will be. Hold onto that feeling while it lasts: Another Sky are steadfast and galvanised to make you understand everything that got them here. How they survived. All you have to do is listen.
Live Dates
2nd Mar - Banquet, Kingston
4th Mar - Rough Trade, Nottingham
5th Mar - Vinyl Whistle, Leeds
6th Mar - Jacaranda, Liverpool
7th Mar - Rough Trade East, London
8th Mar - Resident, Brighton
12th Mar - Rough Trade, Bristol
Track-Listing
1. Beach Day
2. The Pain
3. A Feeling
4. Uh Oh!
5. I Never Had Control
6. Death Of The Author
7. Burn The Way
8. Psychopath
9. Playground
10. City Drones
11. I Caught On Fire
12. Star Roaming
13. Swirling Smoke
