‘Lover’ is the new single from Luke Sital-Singh, available today on Raygun Records via The Orchard. Far from the usual soppy Valentine’s fare, ‘Lover’ is a frank portrayal of the day-to-day reality of love.
“It’s a song about marital fights, relationship woes, and the ebb and flow of that, essentially,” says Luke. “One of the most frequent spats I have with my wife (illustrator Hannah Cousins) is about driving. She drives, I don’t. The new album is sort of about moving to America, and before we decided on the move we went on a road trip down the Californian coast (documented in Cousins new book ‘Coast’). It was a beautiful journey, but there was quite a lot of bickering. So ‘Lover’ is about a difficult drive, and just trying to keep it together, basically.”
‘Lover’ is taken from Luke’s third album ‘A Golden State’, which is out April 5th. The album was produced by Tommy McLaughlin (Villagers, Soak), who also produced Luke’s last album, 2017’s ‘Time Is A Riddle’, and recorded in Portland’s Jackpot Studios, famously set up by Elliott Smith, where alumni include R.E.M., Stephen Malkmus, and The Decemberists. As well as ‘Lover’, ‘A Golden State’ contains previous singles ‘Los Angeles’, ‘The Last Day’ and ‘Love Is Hard Enough Without The Winter’. Fans who pre-order the album will get all four tracks as instant grats.
Luke will head out on a headline UK tour in support of the new record, beginning in Southampton Heartbreakers on April 6th and concluding at Nottingham Bodega on April 17th, with a London date at Earth on April 8th.
In April 2018, Luke was invited to give a TED Talk at the official TED conference in Vancouver. The event proved the catalyst for Luke to finish set of the songs he’d been slowly, painfully writing for the new album. Luke and Tommy headed to Portland last summer, and where joined in the studio by a small group of musicians including the drummer from Villagers, James Byrne, and keyboard player Stelth Ulvang, who tours with The Lumineers.
In January Luke and Hannah relocated from Bristol to LA and, in part, ‘A Golden State’ is album of California dreaming. The cover artwork, created by Cousins, is a four-colour lino cut of the Venice Beach canals taken from ‘Coastline’, and the songs therein reflect the album title, for instance recent single ‘Los Angeles’, a song as hazy and transporting as an LA morn.
“Overall, there is this ethereal, positive vibe, without being too cheesy,” says Luke. “There is an Americana fantasy, of wanting to escape to this gorgeous place, but also about what I’m escaping from.”
The desire for change is also impregnated in ‘Love Is Hard Enough Without The Winter’, a skeletal, delicate blues reflecting on emotional wanderlust. “It’s a song about yearning for something a bit sunnier in these cold winter months,” he says. “Yearning for more light, for that thing that keeps a relationship lit.”
Then there’s ‘The Last Day’, the unbearably poignant lead single, which has already had much love at radio and is not so much about death as the anticipation thereof. “This is the thing: I do seem to write a lot about loss and mourning. I’m… not obsessed,” he decides, “but it seems to move me, the idea of dying.”
Luke Sital-Singh released his debut single ‘Fail For You’ in 2012, introducing the world his deft ability to craft songs with a mesmerizing, piercing emotional quality. The song went on to be featured in numerous TV shows including ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. At the end of 2013, Sital-Singh was featured in the BBC’s Sound of 2014 list and released his debut record ‘The Fire Inside’ later that year.
After a couple of years touring the world and opening for artist such as Villagers, The Staves, Martha Wainwright and Angus and Julia Stone, in 2017 Sital-Singh released his critically-acclaimed sophomore record ‘Time Is A Riddle’. The album’s lead single ‘Killing Me’ has had 10m plays on Spotify, and Luke’s combined streams since 2015 are at almost 120m.
Buy tickets below.