New Aqualung album on the way!
Hello
"Dead Letter": a letter that is undeliverable and unreturnable by the post office.
"Dead letter drop": a place where messages and other material can be left and collected secretly without the sender and the recipient meeting.
Partly this is a homecoming album. After nearly a decade enjoying immigrant life in LA we (me, kim, 2 nearly teenage kids and one elderly dog) moved back home. back home to beloved family and old friends oh, and disorienting culture shock and a distracting feeling of being unmoored in spite of being back where we belong. sweet.
Then i got my piano back. the lovely, wonky upright that i've known since i was 16 hadn't come to LA. it was fostered by an old friend and had a life of it's own (in Dorking). But it was time to be reunited, so it came home too, full of songs.
I'm a songwriter - i've been doing it All the Time since i was about 4. when i need to work something out i write a song. when i'm overwhelmed by a feeling i write a song. when there's something i need to say but can't say it, i write a song.
In between, i help other people write their songs.
In the years since 10 Futures (2015) i'd done a lot of collaborative work and it was basically great and very rewarding and satisfying. also i got AWARDS (A Grammy, An Ivor Novello) which i should probably pretend don't matter but in fact was FUCKING BRILLIANT!)
But there were things i needed to say and songs i needed to write for myself and once we were home and the piano was there, i started writing them.
And then i realised that where we lived now was round the corner from the studio where we recorded much of my 2nd album "Still Life" in 2003. so i called up my dear musical friends who made that record with me and we went back to (the) Real World and recorded outlines of a bunch of new songs that had fallen out of my old piano.
Then i took those outlines back to my new studio and spent the next 2 years shaping, reshaping, colouring them in, rubbing them out, turning them down, turning them up and writing writing writing (with beautiful assistance from my dream team: Kim, Ben, Matt VB) slowly and carefully finding a way to say the things that needed saying.
And at some point i realised they were all letters. not necessarily to be sent. dead letters.
From me. To You.
Matt x
'Dead Letters' will be released worldwide on 28th October. In addition to digital formats, it will also be available on vinyl, CD and limited white vinyl.