"Spaghetti Western with a Liverpool jangle and surf-noir-shanty"
(Chris Hawkins, 6Music)
4 track taster for 'This Blue Earth', released in Spring 2025 via Shipwrecked Records:
FOR FANS OF:
Love, The Coral, Michael Head/Shack, Tom Waits, Galaxie 500
After releasing their debut album, 'Spring Tide' in 2022, to strong reviews (4* in Mojo magazine, 5* in Morning Star, 6Music and BBC introducing plays), Liverpool-based band The Shipbuilders return with their second album 'This Blue Earth'.
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Working once again with Danny Woodward (B.C. Camplight, ladytron), the band have expanded to a five-piece, taking in a permanent brass section and pushing their sound to its natural limit. ​As ever, the band’s sound remains hard to pinpoint, but all human life is in here. There are musical echoes of Love, The Coral, The Everly Brothers and Charles Mingus, with lyrical giant touchstones such as Hemingway, Joyce and Steinbeck all feeding into a wonderful melting pot that sounds like everything and nothing you've heard. 'This Blue Earth' creates a cohesive universe around itself that begs to be explored.
Whether it is wild storytelling set to urgent drumbeats and sparkling guitars (95 Miles, Hills of Mexico), raucous, chaotic clatters (Daydreaming, Flagpole, The River) or wondrous blue eyed melodies (Polynesia), nestled next to expansive, soaring soundscapes (On the Run, La Dolce Vita) and Merseysippi Gospel hollers (Heavy is the Weight), the album is never static or predicatable and there isn't a cliché in sight.
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Speaking of the album, singer-songwriter Matthew Loughlin-Day says;
“Whereas our debut album 'Spring Tide' was about taking you to other worlds and realms, populated by ghosts and spectres, 'This Blue Earth' is very much of this Earth. These are songs of the dustbowl, of the mountainside and of the Pacific breeze. These are the songs that fall from twisted tree branches that scratch against a heavy leaden sky; songs that are blown in with the fog along the river and songs that cling to the thick air of a sweaty basement that buzzes with the fuzz of swelling amps. These are songs of loves loved and lost and songs that soundtrack your ruminations as you gaze out across the horizon, wondering and dreaming of what lies just beyond, and all the while serving to remind you to never trust a man with a flagpole in his garden..."
Having supported Michael Head & the Red Elastic Band on several UK tour dates in 2024 and continuing to expand their own Shipwrecked clubnights, which has featured acts such as Andy Bell (Ride/Oasis), By the Sea, Bill Ryder-Jones, Stone Club, Roy and more, alongside having played festivals such as Kendal Calling, Sound City and LIMF, The Shipbuilders are building up UK dates for the 'This Blue Earth' tour, with the following dates confirmed, with more to be added:
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FEBRUARY 8th - AZVEX BREWERY, LIVERPOOL​
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FEBRUARY 27TH - HARE & HOUNDS, BIRMINGHAM (SUPPORTING WILLIAM WILLIAM RODGERS)
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MARCH 21st - TELFORD'S WAREHOUSE, CHESTER
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APRIL 12th - THE SNUG, ATHERTON
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APRIL 26TH - THE EXCHANGE BASEMENT, BRISTOL
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MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED IMMINENTLY...
Spotify & videos from 'Spring Tide' campaign: