Sixty-two years of music, loves, losses, long summer days and longer, darker nights are vividly recalled by ‘our greatest living songwriter’, Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band as he plays out flickering scenes from his life on his new album, Loophole, set for release on Fri 3 May 2024 on Modern Sky. Alongside details of the new, 12-track album comes his latest single, “Toxteth Ghost Story”, and album opener, “Shirl’s Ghost.”
Fans of his four-decade back catalogue and readers ready for a ride through half a century of popular culture, with Head as their guide, will delight in the news that his long-awaited autobiography, Ciao Ciao Bambino: A Magical Memoir, is also announced for publication by Nine Eight Books on Thu 15 August 2024.
Matching happiness with creativity and hitching his faith in love to a new era of productivity, Head will release his second solo album with The Red Elastic Band less than two years after 2022’s remarkable, universally acclaimed Dear Scott. Thanks, in part, to the memory-jolting joy and frequent shocks found in the process of writing his memoirs, Head wrote and recorded at a career-record-breaking pace, finding that those places, faces, and voices from the past have all rushed to take their place amongst the 12 new songs heard across Loophole.
Set for release on standard and collectors’ vinyl editions, CD, cassette and digital editions, Loophole will be Head’s 11th studio album.
Following up December’s standalone single, “Ciao Ciao Bambino”, which started the camera running in Head’s childhood bedroom and echoed with the much-missed voice of his late mother, Head now sets the countdown to Loophole’s release running with a new single, “Shirl’s Ghost.” Originally conceived as an instrumental, playing out Dear Scott with ethereal disquiet, the reprise finds Head’s nostalgic, wistful lyrics describing an encounter with the otherworld, meeting a Red Elastic Band performance emboldened by brass and sheets of distorted guitars.
Head says: “Shirl was a neighbour of mine, living in the flat above me. She was a collector, with sequinned dresses from her dancing days around the world hanging around the place. Amongst these piles of stuff was her mum’s ashes, but she couldn’t find them. Before getting evicted, she asked me to find them. I did that, handed them to her, and shortly after, weird things started happening around the flat. My son Arlo’s theory was that I’d disturbed her, and we were living in a Toxteth ghost story.”
Watch the video for “Shirl’s Ghost” – BELOW:
In a year that pulls focus to the singer-songwriter’s wildlife, long career and indelible mark on the lives of his listeners, 2024 will also mark not only the 40th anniversary of the release of his first band, The Pale Fountains’ cherished, cult-classic debut album, Pacific Street, but also 25 years since the release of Shack’s exalted long-player, HMS Fable.
With no shortage of fervour amongst his long-term listeners and those discovering him anew following Dear Scott’s success, fans can gather to hear many of the songs that sang their lives with Head on a run of seven newly-announced UK Tour dates. Culminating in December with an unmissable night at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, all confirmed dates are as follows:
• Thu 2 May – Glasgow, Mackintosh Church
• Fri 3 May – Newcastle, Gosforth Civic Theatre
• Sat 4 May – Leeds, City Varieties
• Wed 8 May – Brighton, CHALK
• Thu 9 May – London, Earth Theatre
• Fri 10 May – Manchester, Gorilla
• Fri 13 Dec – Liverpool, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Tickets for all shows go on general sale at 10 am on Fri 2 February 2024, with booking links available at www.michaelheadofficial.com
With personal appearances not limited to his UK live dates but events connected with the release of his memoirs, fans can look forward to the next twelve months rolling out as ‘The Year of Mick Head’. Signing with Nine Eight Books, the home of popular memoirs by authors including fellow Merseyside songsmith Ian Broudie, Head’s own autobiography is poised to offer poignant, humorous and equally heart-breaking and heart-warming stories starting with a loving and adventurous Liverpool childhood.
Asked to reflect on the majesty and mayhem of his musical life, remembering a supporting cast of unlikely celebrity companions, music industry legends, miscreants and those loved and lost, the book and the album link arms to tell Head’s remarkable story.
Once again, it was produced at YAWN Studios in West Kirby with producer Bill Ryder-Jones and featured all of The Red Elastic Band’s gifted musicians – Phil Murphy (drums), Tom Powell (bass), Nathaniel Cummings (guitars/backing vocals) and Martin Smith (trumpet) – the full track listing for Loophole is confirmed as follows:
1. Shirl’s Ghost
2. Ambrosia
3. Ciao Ciao Bambino
4. Tout Suite
5. The Human Race
6. You Smiled At Me
7. A Ricochet Moment
8. Connemara
9. Merry Go Round
10. You’re A Long Time Dead
11. Naturally It’s You
12. Coda
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