Scottish noise-pop merchants Glasvegas today unveiled their highly-anticipated fourth studio album Godspeed – the group’s first new LP in over seven years. In a nod to the record’s long gestation period, a statement posted on the band’s Twitter account this morning read: “Thank you for all the love and support over the past ‘few’ years. ‘Godspeed’ is out now. It feels so good finally getting to share it with you.”
‘GODSPEED’ IS OUT NOW. GVxhttps://t.co/GWKhDeNmUB pic.twitter.com/14yWAl3W4o
— Glasvegas (@glasvegas) April 2, 2021
The Glaswegian outfit have drip-fed singles from the new album over the course of the last seven months, beginning with Keep Me A Space. That track – a melodic slice of gritty shoegaze pop – suggested the group were ready to reinvest in the powerful, Spector-esque sound that fuelled the success of their superb 2008 debut LP Glasvegas: a record which sold over 300,000 copies in the UK and spawned some of the decade’s most memorable indie-pop fist-pumpers in Daddy’s Gone and Geraldine.
Keep Me A Space was followed by further singles releases in My Body Is A Glasshouse (A Thousand Stones Ago) – a repackaged version of a pulsating Glasvegas ballad that had been in the ether since 2014 – the grunge-tinged Dying To Live, and darkly atmospheric spoken-word track Shake the Cage (Für Theo). Whilst there have been some notable stylistic differences between the new songs, the band’s trademark fuzzy, wall-of-sound guitar sound – and frontman James Allan’s signature impassioned, wailing vocals – have remained constant features.
The new record teeters towards concept album territory, with Allan envisioning the eleven tracks as a stream of consciousness narrative chronicling the events of a single murky Clydeside evening. In an interview with NME last year, he said: “The character basically leaves the house at the beginning of the album and starts to drive somewhere. The character’s always inside the car but there’s parts of that drive that are like a daydream, not reminiscent but the way you are when you’re out driving somewhere, your thoughts can jump from one place to the next, and then you’ll maybe notice something that has a memory in real time.”
In an interview with the Daily Record, Allan said he felt compelled to finish the record – even if others had given up hope on it ever springing to life. He said “Songwriters like me are over-dramatic people who think the world is dependent on them fixing what is out of balance. And until you’ve finished the circle everything is a mess. I feel different now it’s finished.”
Last month Allan also provided the soundtrack to Lorraine Kelly-helmed documentary Return To Dunblane, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the murder of sixteen pupils and a teacher at Dunblane Primary School near Stirling – the deadliest mass shooting in British history. The singer-songwriter spoke in depth to The Guardian about the sombre process of composing music to convey the horror and sadness of one of Scotland’s darkest hours.
The tracklisting for Glasvegas’ new album Godspeed is as follows:
1. Parked Car (Exterior)
2. Dive
3. Dying to Live
4. Shake the Cage (Für Theo)
5. Keep Me a Space
6. Parked Car (Interior)
7. Cupid’s Dark Disco
8. My Body Is a Glasshouse (A Thousand Stones Ago)
9. In My Mirror
10. Stay Lit
11. Godspeed
