SOORD CONFIRMS SECOND SOLO ALBUM
The Pineapple Thief’s leader finishes LP that’s inspired by the birth of his daughter.
Bruce Soord’s “long-gestated second album” will finally be out on Kscope on October 11. He’s been working on the as yet untitled recording for several years but put the project on hiatus after a recent spate of activity.
“Over the last four years, The Pineapple Thief have become a lot bigger so every time I sat down to work on the solo album, TPT got in the way!” he explains with a laugh. “Now that Gavin [Harrison, drummer] is off with King Crimson, I’ve been able to get it down and go through all the ideas I’ve been messing around with over the years and just go back to the drawing board.”
Instead of approaching the material as individual tracks, Soord used his computer as a tape machine and recorded two linear pieces with the aim of recreating the vinyl experience he’d enjoyed so much as a child.
“I remembered what it was like, as a kid, to pick up a record and play it. I’d lay on my bed and only know it had finished when you could hear the stylus against the runout groove. Then I’d have to get up and play the other side,” he muses. “As a kid, I played Anthony Phillips’ The Geese & The Ghost to death and I always said to myself, ‘One day, I’ll do my own The Geese & The Ghost’ on vinyl.”
Despite earlier plans to bring in guest musicians, the singer-songwriter has decided to play all instruments himself. He describes the results as “very modern” with “classic tones on the guitars and vocals”.
“The best way to describe [the theme] is ‘observational prog’,” he says. “I started to think about writing again after my baby girl was born [last October]. In the last few months, my wife and I have gone out for walks with the baby around my hometown. It’s a typical suburban town with terrible drug problems so there’s this juxtaposition of a happy baby, who’s loved every moment of her life, and you’re then looking at the world she’s coming into. The last couple of years, globally, have been a bit scary, but it’s not a grim record; it touches on both sides of the spectrum.”
Meanwhile, The Pineapple Thief are looking forward to their first ever North American tour this autumn. They hope to release the follow-up to the acclaimed Dissolution next year. NRS
“I always said to myself, ‘One day, I’ll do my own The Geese & The Ghost’.”