L.Y.R. have shared Guernica Jigsaw, the latest single from their forthcoming album Dark Sky Reservation, out April 3rd via Real World Records. The track arrives with an accompanying visualiser.
The musical project of UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, producer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick J. Pearson and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Richard Walters, L.Y.R. began as a creative correspondence experiment and has since evolved into a fully-fledged band with two studio albums, a concept record about a street in Barnsley, and an orchestral ode to the Shipping Forecast for the BBC Proms behind them.
Guernica Jigsaw is a tale of unrequited love set against the hollow grandeur of contemporary art retail. Two employees orbit each other without connecting, dwarfed by municipal culture and perhaps too guarded to step outside their roles. Pearson’s delicately cascading piano motif becomes a kind of unspoken beauty that neither character can admit to — and so they pass on escalators, heading in opposite directions through vast, impersonal public spaces. Picasso’s searing depiction of warfare is neatly packaged as a gift; heartfelt artworks are reduced to toys and domestic utensils. Feelings, the song suggests, struggle to exist in such surroundings.
The single follows previously released tracks Blah! Blah! Blah! and the title track Dark Sky Reservation. The album — L.Y.R.’s third commercial release — explores sightings of hopefulness and constancy in an increasingly storm-battered world, taking its name from those regions of landscape where light pollution is discouraged, allowing stargazers to peer into the cosmos.
L.Y.R. head out on their largest UK tour to date this spring, including a show at London’s ICA on May 6th, with the Hebden Bridge date already sold out.
Dark Sky Reservation is released April 3rd via Real World Records.
Pre-Order Dark Sky Reservation: https://lnk.to/RW270
L.Y.R UK Tour
Thursday 16 April – CAMBRIDGE – Storey’s Field Centre
Friday 17 April – KENDAL – Arts Centre
Saturday 18 April – LIVERPOOL – Tung Auditorium
Sunday 19 April – BIRMINGHAM – Bradshaw Hall
Tuesday 21 April – NOTTINGHAM – Squire Performing Arts Centre
Wednesday 22 April – GLASGOW – Cottiers
Thursday 23 April – GATESHEAD – Glasshouse Sage 2
Friday 24 April – POCKLINGTON – Pocklington Arts Centre
Saturday 25 April – HEBDEN BRIDGE – Trades Club (SOLD OUT)
Monday 4 May – LEEDS – City Varieties
Tuesday 5 May – BRISTOL – The Lantern
Wednesday 6 May – LONDON – ICA
Thursday 7 May – BRIGHTON – Komedia
Friday 8 May – EXETER – Mount Dinham
Saturday 9 May – FALMOUTH – Cornish Bank at KCM church