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Blaenavon — That’s Your Lot (April 7th, 2017)

Blaenavon — That’s Your Lot (April 7th, 2017)

          Blaenavon — That’s Your Lot (April 7th, 2017)  Blaenavon — That’s Your Lot (April 7th, 2017) •   Blaenavon’s debut gives voice and form to youth in all its infinite variety. Indie pop rockers with a vibrant, energetic sound and dark lyrical themes.
•   “Astonishing debut album. Rammed full of great riffs and melodies, stunning dynamics and time changes, and really affecting lyrics. THE happening UK band.” — GlyndwrFotka uživatele Ben Tais Amundssen.                                                        © Steve Gullick Photography
Location: Hampshire, England
Album release: April 7th, 2017
Record Label: Transgressive
Format: Double LP
Duration:     19:41 + 37:58 => 57:39 
Tracks:
Disc 1:
01 Take Care     4:48 
02 Let’s Pray     3:35 
03 Orthodox Man     3:50 
04 My Bark Is Your Bite     3:36 
05 Lonely Side     3:52
Disc 2: 
06 Let Me See What Happens Next     2:17 
07 Alice Come Home     6:28 
08 Ode to Joe     6:11 
09 I Will Be the World     4:31 
10 Prague ‘99     5:39 
11 Swans     7:56 
12 That’s Your Lot    4:56
© 2017 Transgressive Records
Credits:
•   Jim Abbiss      Producer, Synthesizer
•   Oliver Barton~Wood      Engineer
•   Blaenavon      Composer, Vocals
•   Guy Davie      Mastering
•   Ian Dowling      Mixing
•   Benjamin Gregory      Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
•   Harris McMillan      Drums
•   Frank Wright      Bass, Synthesizer
Product Description
↔★••→  Black vinyl repress. Following a breakthrough 2016 which saw them sell out London’s Scala, fill tents at Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds and Latitude, and release a run of critically acclaimed singles, Blaenavon are pleased to share news of their long awaited debut album, That’s Your Lot. Recorded with Grammy~winning producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele, Bjork) the LP marks a certain milestone for the band — a sumptuous, thrilling and brave collection of songs written throughout their teenage years and now fully realised. Intensely personal, yet exploring the universal experiences of friendship, sadness, hope, love held and lost, and all the confusions of youth — a body of work to help define a generation.
Review
By Jessica Goodman / 10 APRIL 2017, 11:51 BST / SCORE: 8
•   ALBUM OF THE WEEK
•   Whether it’s through wide eyed wonder or drawn out turmoil, on debut album That’s Your Lot Blaenavon give voice and form to youth in all of its infinite variety.
•   Written over five years, the album is a venture through everything this band have come to be. It’s a lengthy undertaking. Clocking in at very nearly an hour, the record does offer its indulgences. It’s lavishly made too. Riffs ebb and flow, melodies glide and collide, building up a layered tapestry that never loses its sense of splendour. As rich in worth as it is in texture, the album is the very embodiment of who Blanevon are.
•   It’s a stunning stratosphere the band create for themselves. Refrains bubble so vividly you can practically picture them in all their colour. Lyrics glide with a gentle ease, words that are familiar, fragile, and resounding with strength all at once. Through songs that’ll sweep you away to songs that strip everything else back, the sound that Blaenavon create is equally as indefinable as it is exhilarating.
•   On singles “Orthodox Man” and “Let’s Pray” the group showcase their knack for a steadfast pop hooks with an unwavering tenacity. Songs like “Alice Come Home” demonstrate their ability to take entire genres in their stride, drifting from gentle melodies through assuredly plucked refrains to ferocious cataclysm and back again while barely even breaking a sweat.
•   Penultimate track “Swans”, written when frontman Ben Gregory was just 16, has been with the group from the start. A mark of endurance, it presents them at their most sprawling and cinematic, hinting towards how much further they are capable of going. Intricately woven, the world of It’s Your Lot is every bit as spirited as the world that surrounds us.
•   Resilient in its own admissions, the album is inner thoughts given flesh, a voice of candour and comfort soaring towards the future. Where it’s leading is anyone’s guess, but that’s not the point. The point is right here. The point is right now. The point is the almost~hour you spend listening to these songs. And it’s nothing short of magnificent.
•   https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/
Website: http://blaenavon.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blaeners
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blaenavon/
Label: http://www.transgressiverecords.com/
About:
•   Still in their teenage years, and recently free of school, Blaenavon are three boys who have taken the music world by storm.  Having played with the likes of Foals, Bloc Party and Warpaint to name a few, the band have released two EPs on Transgressive Records and have recently completed their debut album, with singer Ben Gregory starring in Burberry’s New Faces campaign. 
•   Having released previous singles ‘Into The Night’ and ‘Denim Patches’ on Transgressive imprint paradYse, Blaenavon followed up with debut EP Koso in September 2013, through Transgressive Records. The four~track offering encompasses everything good about a young band with a very bright future, flowing seamlessly from delicately picked verses to euphoric sections of soaring vocals and powerful guitars.
•   In October 2015, the band released the follow up to Koso with their ‘Miss World EP’.  The release was accompanied by shows with the likes of Songhoy Blues and Foals, as well as a performance of ‘Dragon’ for Burberry Acoustic.  2016 has seen the boys continue to perfect their live show, with tours supporting The Sherlocks and Sundara Karma as well as their own headline tour in May, along with appearances at Glastonbury, Truck, Latitude and Reading & Leeds to name but a few across the summer.  They’ve also released two singles from their debut album, ‘I Will Be The World’ and ‘Let’s Pray’.                                                                                                                   Bio 2:
•   The story of Blaenavon’s debut album might be quite easily told: three teenage friends who entered a school talent contest, posted their songs online, and sprawled their way through early gigs, gathering a devoted fanbase and critical acclaim as they went. A band who, after the juggle of exams, EPs, record company attention, have finally delivered a debut album that is sumptuous and thrilling and brave.
•   But it is also a story of a more complicated time, a coming of age of sorts, of 12 intensely personal songs that explore friendship, sadness, hope, love held and lost, and all the confusions of youth in a world that is slowly revealing itself.
•   Ben Gregory, Frank Wright, and Harris McMillan were 14 and living in Hampshire when they first performed a slightly shambolic cover of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” in front of a judging panel of three geography teachers sitting on plastic chairs. The teachers were bemused, their fellow students rapturous, the boys themselves so lit up by the experience that they took up residence in a bedroom at Wright’s house, recording as they wrote, swiftly posting their songs to Soundcloud. It was a process that proved impulsive, instinctive, compelling — and they soon caught the attention of Transgressive, the record label that signed them early on.
•   In the years that followed, the teens released a handful of songs, focusing more of their attention on their A~levels — on studying jazz double bass and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, than the pursuit of rock stardom. Following their graduation, however, they made the decision to postpone college to record their debut album.
•   The band worked with producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele, Bombay Bicycle Club) to create That’s Your Lot, whittling down their clutch of 100 songs, helping to find their sense and common thread.
•   Gregory is a remarkable lyrical talent, at times inspired by the writing of Herman Hesse and Evelyn Waugh and the songs of Elliott Smith, but with his own distinctive style: an openness, a keen wit, an eye for beauty. On bass and drums, Wright and McMillan provide Blaenavon’s musical backbone; a sound that is ambitious, majestic, ferocious, and refined.
•   To see Blaenavon live is to be struck by a sense of invincibility, and even at their earliest shows — even when they played their first London gig at the Barfly in 2012, they were infused with that same pluck and spirit. In this collection of songs, as in their stunning live shows, the sheer force of this band seems undeniable.
•   And in Gregory, it is impossible not to see the kindling of an artist coming to recognize his band is destined to be something special. “That’s Your Lot,” he says, mulling over the ambiguity of the album’s title. “Is this a parting message? A final goodbye? To a person or from us as artists? Is it more about the idea of fate and acceptance of what the world has planned for you?” 

•   For all enquiries, please contact:  //  http://www.canvasbackmusic.com/   
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Blaenavon — That’s Your Lot (April 7th, 2017)

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