Having already successfully mastered a career in music that stretches far beyond many of Britain’s biggest bands of the past 10 years, Hatherley’s third album shapes her as a truly innovative artist in her own right.
“‘New Worlds’ is the story of how things go wrong - and then they go right again.” – Charlotte Hatherley, this album could arguably be considered her ‘coming of age’ solo work. Moulded by her unrivalled experience as a guitarist in Nightnurse, Ash, and touring with Bat For Lashes in the live band, Charlotte has been musically wooed by Courtney Love and Brody Dalle. Along with being hand-picked by her personal hero, Bryan Ferry, to play with his touring band, she draws on these special moments and far beyond, to deliver an album that staunchly defies classification.
“After I left Ash I think I went a bit mental,” says the luminously honest young woman who joined Ash at 17, “it’s really hard to figure out who you are at that age, let alone when you’re with a bunch of blokes! It’s arrested development. So this record is all about a search for truth and honesty. Thinking, ‘right, now I know what I’m supposed to be doing’.”
A collection of vibrant, guitar-led, electronically-skewed art-pop, a singular force of creative nature from the multi-layered dreamscape of the glorious first single ‘White’ to the frenetic, Devo-esque ‘New Worlds’ (“my world is suffering from a loss of brilliance,” she sings like a pop-art Kate Bush escaped from a musical Tardis, “If I could take off my skin then I would see all the colours there”); to the eerie, watery finger-snaps through ‘Wrong Notes’ (the closing, electronic atmospheric adapted from Leonard Bernstein’s classical caper, ‘Wrong Note Rag’) with its hard-won wisdom which tells us “all the wrong notes are right”.
‘New Worlds’ was created with her long-time collaborator Rob Ellis (the absurdly gifted drummer, producer and arranger best-known for his work with PJ Harvey since 1990), the two randomly playing together in a studio in Wales before recording the songs completely live in a single week in London, produced by Luke Smith (ex-Clor, Depeche Mode) and mixed by Alan Moulder (renowned mixer for the Arctic Monkeys and Smashing Pumpkins).
Charlotte Hatherley promised something different, and ‘New Worlds’ takes that promise, delivers it in a star-shaped package and beams it skyward.
Charlotte Hatherley’s up coming shows:
12th September Kasbah Coventry
13th September The Soul Tree Cambridge
15th September The Bodega Social Club Nottingham
16th September Night & Day Manchester
18th September King Tuts Wah Wah Hut Glasgow
19th September The Duchess York
19th September The Brickyard Carlisle
21st September Thekla Bristol
22nd September The Relentless Garage London
23rd September The Unit Southampton
'New Worlds' is released 19th October followed by single 'Alexander' on 26th October.
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