Andy Burrows, former drummer of Razorlight, released his latest album, Fall Together Again in October 2014. The album – incredibly Burrows’ tenth long player, between past solo albums and his recordings with Razorlight, We Are Scientists, Smith & Burrows, plus his BAFTA-nominated soundtrack for The Snowman and The Snowdog – will be preceded by the single As Good As Gone and accompanied by a quartet of UK dates including a show at London’s Dingwalls on 30th October.
Brilliantly, unashamedly melodic, Fall Together Again is the kind of record where the earworms patiently queue up to present themselves one after the other; where songs open out into soaring choruses that soon give way to brighter and ever bolder hooks. It’s a record imbued with the spirit of early McCartney solo albums and sunroof-down daydream soul. It’s shot through with the kind of sun-dappled soft rock that used to radiate from American FM radios in mid-’70s.
Following the success of his solo album, Company (2012), which spawned four Radio 2 A-listed singles, and the BAFTA nominated collaboration with composer Ilan Eshkeri that emerged later that year, Burrows booked himself into North Wales’ famously isolated residential studio Bryn Derwen at the end of 2013 to get to work on producing the follow up.
While a typically North Walian winter raged outside, in the studio Burrows and his band – a group he’s worked with since their days as Razorlight road crew – channelled warmer climes. From the chain gang chant of As Good As Gone to the Lindsey Buckingham-esque Who Are You Now? via the freewheelin’ City To Coast, Fall Together Again has all the bliss and brightness of an open coast road in summer. It’s the record that will put Andy Burrows’ past way behind him and should see him rightly recognised as one of our boldest and most consistent songwriters.
