Albany Down are In the Ashed - Phoenix Style!

WORDS: Steve Yourglivch PICS: Rob Blackham (studio) and John Bull (live)

Albany Down have a new album, Born In The Ashes coming out on September 1st, and they will be hoping that like the Phoenix of mythology it signals a renewal and rebirth. Indeed, those are the subject matter of much of the album’s lyrics, penned by founder member, vocalist and guitarist Paul Turley.

He’s seen a few changes since the band made quite an impression with their debut album South Of The City back in 2011. This was followed in 2013 with Not Over Yet, and 2016’s The Outer Reach release. Now, after changes of personal down the years and having endured the tribulations of lockdown Paul is back with Ben Atkins on bass and drummer Pete Hancock.

I received the new album to review, which you’ll find elsewhere in this issue, and gave Paul a call to talk about the latest stage in Albany Down history. The album kicks off with a real rocker of a track entitled Always Want What You Can’t Have. I mentioned to Paul that the album contained a lot of songs about change and renewal.

‘’Yes indeed, in 2017, just after the last line up broke up, I went through a lot of personal changes too. I started a new job, and my daughter was born. Plus of course on top of that we had the unprecedented impact of the pandemic, so there was a lot of turbulence and change happening in my life. So that certainly is reflected in my writing, Also the idea of how change is going to affect things moving forwards.’’

The album certainly isn’t negative about going through change, there are some great upbeat moments, especially the tracks Let Your Love Shine, which closes the record, and I’ll Come Running.

‘’Yeah, it’s good having those tracks on there too. We actually recorded it in two sessions with a bit of a gap in between. The opener Always Want and Let Your Love Shine were the first two tracks we recorded in 2020, the rest last year. It’s great they kinda bookend the album even though they were written earlier, I think they really fit with everything else. They were tracks I sort of had in my back pocket waiting to do something with.’’

I wondered if this album had started to develop straight after its predecessor back in 2017.

‘’Well pretty much after Not Over Yet some of the other band members decided to leave. Paul, the previous singer now lives in Canada and the others wanted to do their own thing. As I said my daughter was born in 2017 too so I really took about a year out. At that point I wrote those first two tracks that we recorded. The rest I worked on over the last three years. Through that early period, I knew I wanted to keep going and keep something together. I wasn’t quite sure what form it would take, there wasn’t a big grand plan, but I knew I wanted to keep doing something basically. I never sit down and think OK I’m going to write a song now, they just come to me and demand to be written. Sometimes it might just be a title for a song, so I write that down and it nags at you until you do something with it. Often the music is just playing around in my head, or a riff will come out if I’m playing around with the guitar. Usually for me it’s the music that comes first, unless as I said it’s a song title, which can form part of the chorus, so I write around that.’’

The album is released at the beginning of September so that should mark the relaunch of Albany Down as a force on the UK Blues circuit.

‘’Absolutely, let’s see where it takes us. We’ve got gigs lined up for September and October and we’re working on dates for November onwards. There’s lists up on the webpages etc. Obviously we’ll be promoting the new release so expect to hear a lot of songs from that but we’ll also fit in the best of the older stuff too. We’ve still got some long term followers out there.’’

I have to say I found the new album to be a good listen and it will certainly appeal to fans of blues rock, but the emphasis is definitely more to the rock side. Blues purists probably won’t feel at home.

‘’ I think that’s fair comment. I never really try to think too hard about what genre I’m writing in. The songs will take you where they want and I guess also it depends a bit on what I’m listening to at the time. This probably has a more rock album feel than our previous releases.’’

There is certainly some outstanding guitar playing going on, and on two tracks there are some great horn sections, plus two super ballads.

‘Yes, Greg Haver (producer) put the horn players together, he really had the right contacts for that. It gives those songs something extra. The ballads were great to do, I always love playing those slower numbers although it’s always hard to know where to fit ballads into a live show, you don’t want the energy levels to drop too much. As a guitarist my influences at roots level are pretty much what you would expect, Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Beck and Clapton but lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Mastodon and Baroness, more heavy metal, hard rock stuff. We enjoyed recording Reflections, there’s certainly some Hendrix inspiration at play there.’’

I mentioned to Paul how I thought the track Kingdom Of The Blind reminded me of NWOBHM.

‘’Haa, yes, that one was written by Pete Hancock the drummer. He brought that pretty much complete to the session. We messed around with the lyrics a bit, a very classic

bit, change the intro maybe, or revamp and extend the chorus. It’s good to hear different sounds in the studio. Producer Greg Haver is great, he always brings good ideas to the table.’’

Indeed, Greg has been on board right from the beginning and brings a wealth of experience having worked in the studio with the likes of Manic Street Preachers and Super Furry Animals.

Check out my track by track review in this issue to get more of a detailed idea of the album but I think this will put Albany Down front and centre in the UK blues rock community.