Although we were treated to a collaborative venture with Peter Wiegold last year (Van Diemen’s Land), Sam Lee’s last studio venture was back in 2015 with The Fade in Time. In the interim, he has been busy song collecting and promoting music as well as getting hands-on with Extinction Rebellion, Music Declares Emergency and the recent RSPB campaign, ‘Let Nature Sing’, which improbably launched 3 minutes of birdsong into the UK Top 20 charts. How he found time to record a new album is anyone’s guess but the good news is that he has.
‘Old Wow’, his third album is due for release on January 31, 2020 (via Cooking Vinyl), and just as his last release provided a giant leap forward from Mercury Music Prize-nominated/Arts Foundation Award-winning debut, ‘Ground of Its Own’ (2012), our initial impression is that he’s about to do the same. Old Wow was produced by Bernard Butler (who also contributes electric guitar) and featuring Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser as well as Cosmo Sheldrake, spoken-word poet Dizraeli and The Gloaming’s Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. The album will be accompanied by Sam’s most comprehensive national UK tour to date, including his Celtic Connections premiere on January 29, 2020 (dates below).
The announcement comes with the release of an electrifying album single ‘The Garden Of England’, a re-write of the traditional song ‘Seeds Of Love’:
https://youtu.be/rC8YqEaQpJ0
Recorded at RAK Studios and Studio 355 with Bernard Butler’s (Suede, MacAlmont & Butler) production, ‘Old Wow’ pushes Sam’s music into further remarkable territory. Butler’s electric guitar playing marks the first time the instrument has ever appeared in Lee’s music, whilst Elizabeth Frazer’s spine-tingling vocals join other appearances from Cosmo Sheldrake, spoken-word poet Dizraeli and The Gloaming’s Caoimhin O Raghallaigh.
The diverse cast of musicians Sam has assembled take the album’s reinterpretations of traditional songs into deeply affecting territory in an age of climate crisis. ‘Old Wow’ is devoted to the natural world; a commitment that has long since dominated Sam’s principles. The title came to him during a journey in Scotland, when a buzzard swooped down the mountainside and screamed overhead. Sam felt he was “receiving a message, telling me to listen deep – suddenly the name ‘Old Wow’ emerged. I use it to describe that sense of wonder and magic that can, if listened deeply enough, animate nature very powerfully.”
Spanning new interpretations of American spirituals (‘Lay This Body Down’), Romany Gypsy songs (‘The Moon Shines Bright’) and traditional English standards (‘The Garden Of Love’), ‘Old Wow’ arrives alongside arresting artwork. Designed by Alex Merry (Damien Hirst, Gucci), an anachronistically bucolic scene captures the singer amongst vegetation & animals, with modern traces of human impact conspicuously absent. With ‘Old Wow’, Sam Lee has created a timeless bridge; in his words; “Music that simultaneously looks back into the past and ahead to the future. An urgent cry to help inspire us all to fall back in love with the natural world that we might strengthen our resolve to protect her.’
TOUR DATES
29 January 2020 Glasgow Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (Strathclyde Suite)
31 January 2020 Newcastle Cluny
01 February 2020 Manchester Night and Day
03 February 2020 Nottingham Rescue Rooms
04 February 2020 Leeds City Varieties
05 February 2020 Birmingham Glee
06 February 2020 Exeter Phoenix
07 February 2020 Bodmin St Petroc’s Church
08 February 2020 Lyme Regis Marine Theatre
10 February 2020 Cambridge Junction 2
13 February 2020 Brighton St George’s
15 February 2020 Canterbury Colyer-Fergusson Hall
16 February 2020 Norwich Open
17 February 2020 London EartH
19 February 2020 Bristol St George’s
21 February 2020 Cardiff The Gate
Old Wow’ track-listing
1. The Garden of England
2. Lay This Body Down
3. The Moon Shines Bright
4. Soul Cake
5. Spencer The Rover
6. Jasper Sea
7. Sweet Sixteen
8. Turtle Dove
9. Worthy Wood
10. Balnafanen
PRE ORDER HERE: https://SLee.lnk.to/OldWowPR