Throw your hats in the air, Danny and The Champs are back!

Credit : Simon Weller

A new album in October and a single now. Hussah!!

“You Are Not A Stranger Here”, the long-awaited new album by Danny & the Champions of the World, will be released through Loose on 18th October. Their seventh studio release and first since 2017’s “Brilliant Light”.  Produced by Champs keyboard player Thomas Collison the album will be available on transparent vinyl, CD and download. To accompany the announcement, the band have unveiled a video to their new single ‘I’m In Love’.

The old contradiction that in creating something intensely personal, you can share something inspiringly universal, is at the heart of the new album. It’s a body of work that dates back to 2007, with a cast list of contributors featuring long-running Champs members such as the aforementioned Collison, guitarist Paul Lush, pedal steel player Henry Senior, drummer Steve Brookes and saxophonist ‘Free Jazz’ Geoff Widdowson, alongside equally fine contributions from Daniel Hawkins on bass and a second saxophone player, Lachlan Wilson, who is Danny’s uncle, based in the family’s native Australia. Describing the band’s playing Wilson notes: “That space is all there, the bed is synths, piano, bass, drums, and then Lushy’s got all the sky in the world. He’s kind of the David Gilmour of the record and Henry is the Robert Fripp.”

And… deep breath… it’s a concept album, sort of. “The way the record is laid out is across a day,” explains Danny. “You hear the weather report in the morning and then you’re immediately into this question of ‘I know what I’m doing, but I don’t know why I’m doing it anymore. As it goes through the day, you get the commute, the hold message from a call centre and finally ending the day back home with ‘Sooner or Later.'”

It’s more than a quarter-century since Wilson emerged with his brother Julian at the helm of the much-loved Grand Drive, and he acknowledges the step change in his approach to his songcraft this time. “I think it’s one of those records where you suddenly think, you’re not old but you’re not a kid anymore, and you wake up and go, ‘What’s this all about? The songs don’t profess to know anything. In fact, they’re a lot less self-assured than all of the previous thirty years of songs. I’m looking in the mirror a bit here. As a result, it’s a weird mix of looking at yourself and looking at the world. There’s nostalgia in there, and there’s regret. I’d been reading and talking about lots of things that maybe you don’t do so much when you’re young. Not the big questions, but you find yourself going ‘Sorry, can we just stop and think ‘What’s the point here?’ And I guess the title of the album is reflective of that.”

Circling back to that contradiction between the intensely personal and the inspiringly universal, Danny concludes “These aren’t huge epiphanies. They’re little things that you’ve suddenly realised about yourself, about life and the weirdest thing is that by singing about not trying to be universal, these are possibly the most universal things I’ve ever written.”

“You Are Not A Stranger Here” tracklisting:

Talking a Good Game (5.01)
Kicking Tyres (8.57)
Last Exit (1.16)
Every Door You Have Ever Opened (0.53)
I’m in Love (5.47)
Future Past (5.28)
In Search of Koji (1.08)
The Robot Cries (6.37)
The Poetics of Space (2.48)
Sooner or Later (5.57)

You can preorder the album by following the link here. The band have already announced a date at London’s Garage on the 2nd of November which will no doubt be a sell out celebration. Tickets are on sale from this link.

About Keith Hargreaves 460 Articles
Riding the one eyed horse into dead town the scales fell from his eyes. Music was the only true god at once profane and divine The dust blew through his mind as he considered the offering... And then he scored it out of ten and waited for the world to wake up
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Andrew Riggs

Great news just put on some Grand Drive, how good were they ?