British rock band BOSTON MANOR have recently unveiled their upcoming album, Sundiver, their fifth studio release, scheduled for September 6 through SharpTone Records.
The band are currently touring Australia with Trophy Eyes and Towns, giving fans an early taste of what to expect from the incredible new album in a live setting and gaining rave reviews for their performances.
The Everblack Podcast caught up with Mike Cunniff from Boston Manor to discuss their current Australian tour with Trophy Eyes and Towns, upcoming new album ‘Sundiver’ and his dream band collaboration.
Watch/listen to the interview here:
“Could you please open that window, let the new world in.” The sage simplicity of Sundiver’s opening lyrics says it all. Boston Manor front man Henry Cox is opening the next chapter of a story that began with 2022 album Datura. That record opened with the lines, “Do me a favour, close that window, keep the heating in, there’s a fire in the car park, I see it smouldering.” Sundiver, then, is the yin to Datura’s yang. Coming out on September 6 via SharpTone Records, Sundiver is Boston Manor’s fifth album and one that represents a glimmering dawn for the Blackpool five-piece. Grown from a seedbed of optimism and sobriety, the LP celebrates new beginnings, second chances and rebirth. With two members recently stepping into fatherhood, hope is baked into every note.
Like anything worth doing though, that hope has been hard-won. On Sundiver, change doesn’t just happen it is willed into existence, forged in the flame of grief and bent into shape with a hammer blow of positivity. Working with long-time producer Larry Hibbitt, alongside engineer Alex O’Donovan, the band switched recording from London to the leafier pastures of the home counties. There’s a brightness searching to get out of Sundiver that feels like a purposeful about-turn from the darkness of [2022 album] Datura.
This year’s pair of earlier single releases explored second chances (Container) and What If? scenarios (Sliding Doors), bringing with them a refreshed mindset, the band clearly ready to create something immersive, embracing the unpredictable, glorious, devastating nature of life as a human being. Lyrics foxtrot from parallel universes to personal growth, vivid dreamscapes to raw grief. Individually they’re single strokes full of meaning and magic. Together they’re a landscape.
Of the new album, lead singer Henry Cox comments: “Sundiver is the culmination of two years work and four years of planning. Going into the pandemic we knew our next record would be a double album released in two parts, the first a short shadowy-noiry electronic record set over one night and the second a sprawling rock record that documents the following day. Both albums are products of their environments, we made Datura in the dead of winter in a windowless studio complex that mostly just produced techno, we’d enter before the sun rose and leave long after it set, basically never seeing sunlight. We made Sundiver in Welwyn Garden City over two summers, we barbecued every day & would walk across the road to a meadow and just take naps in the sunshine when we weren’t recording.
We’ve essentially been working on this album and building up to it since the pandemic. We were obsessed with trying to make a record that felt like blistering sunshine, or that wavy/hazy horizon you get when the pavement is super hot, but we didn’t want it to sound “happy” or “major key”. Sundiver is by far Boston Manor’s best and most ambitious record to date, and we couldn’t be happier with it, I really hope our fans love it as much as we do.”
NEW ALBUM SUNDIVER
OUT SEPTEMBER 6 ON SHARPTONE RECORDS
PRE-ORDER SUNDIVER HERE
BOSTON MANOR
SUPPORTING TROPHY EYES
TOUR DATES:
FRIDAY 30 AUGUST – HINDLEY STREET MUSIC HALL, ADELAIDE
SATURDAY 31 AUGUST – THE FORUM, MELBOURNE
HEADLINE SHOW DATES:
SUPPORTED BY SUNBLEACHED
THURSDAY 29 AUGUST – THE BARWON CLUB, GEELONG
Tickets on sale now at https://www.livenation.com.
