Following recent performances at Electric Fields, Tramlines and Latitude Festival, THE FUTUREHEADS have released the video for their current single “Listen, Little Man!” It’s the second single to be taken from their forthcoming album Powers, which will be released on Nul Records via The Orchard on August 30, 2019.
“Listen, Little Man!” is a wonky stomp named after a book by controversial therapist Wilhelm Reich. The accompanying video was directed by Marc Corrigan. “It has a perfect balance between lightheartedness and menace which marries very well with the concept of the song,” says vocalist/guitarist Barry Hyde. “Playing with the micro and the macro and highlighting the insanity that the human race is sometimes gripped by!”
Powers is The Futureheads sixth studio album and their first electric guitar release in almost a decade. Recorded and self-produced at Newcastle’s First Avenue Studio, Powers is a record that looks at the balance of power in a personal, political and relational sense” and puts it to some of the most vital, invigorated material the band have made since their first steps.
THE FUTUREHEADS “Listen, Little Man!”
Having first emerged at the start of the ’00s amidst a burgeoning swarm of guitar bands, the Sunderland quartet, with their proud regional accents and spiky, playful sensibilities, stuck out from the off. Over the following decade The Futureheads – comprised of vocalists and guitarists Barry Hyde and Ross Millard, vocalist and bassist David ‘Jaff’ Craig and vocalist and drummer Dave Hyde – amassed five critically-acclaimed albums, headlined countless tours and earned an NME Single of the Year accolade for their iconic cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love.”
Returning with Powers, the band’s aim is one of forward motion not nostalgia; though the quartet could probably rely on the successes of old to push them through the next couple of festival seasons, that isn’t – and hasn’t ever – been the point. “Obviously it’s an absolute privilege to come back and still have fans and that’s something to cherish,” Ross says, “but I also think we’ve got a bit of a job to do about letting people know that there’s more to this band than you might have thought.”
It’s a risky statement, but one that’s confirmed immediately once you press play. Across the album, the band push further, melodically and lyrically, than ever before; there’s no safety net here, but a band putting everything out there and driving it to the wire again. “I love the thing Bowie said about how an artist should be slightly out of their depth because that’s when you get the good stuff,” Barry affirms. “Or as David Lynch says, ‘If you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deep.’”
Cumulatively, it’s a record that kicks harder and more intensely than you might have ever understandably predicted. “The record we’ve made is a little off kilter and maybe a little more out of step than you might expect from four lads in their 30s. I think it might surprise people,” smiles Ross.
If you were ever a fan of The Futureheads, or – just as importantly – if you were never a fan of The Futureheads, you should get the same thing from Powers: a record that sounds invigorated, with something important to say and an idiosyncratic, exciting way of saying it, made by four people here for all the right reasons. “There’s power and sophistication and simplicity, and it’s bloody hard to play, which I think will keep the shows interesting because we’re on the edge of our abilities with this,” grins Barry. “It’s musical audacity: that’s what this album’s about.”
The band have just finished a successful tour of the UK that included a sold out show at The Garage (London). This summer they will play festivals across the UK and Europe. Powers is out August 30, 2019 on Nul Records via The Orchard. Interviews with the band are available upon request.