New York, NY (Top40 Charts) UK-based rock band Stornoway have announced the U.S. release of their third album Bonxie. Produced by Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters, Echo & the Bunnymen), the album will be released on July 31st via Slimstyle Records.
Bonxie has already earned high praise in the UK, with The Guardian acclaiming it as "Stornoway's best work yet: big music, which deserves the largest stage." The Times similarly refers to the album as "The best songs of their career… jubilant, infectious and stunning," while Uncut declares "Stornoway have become a band to cherish."
As with Stornoway's previous albums, 2010's Beachcomber's Windowsill and 2013's Tales From Terra Firma, the natural world provides the band with both breathtaking backdrop and telling metaphor. Layered with images of the wild outdoors, tumultuous oceans, and primal migratory instincts - tapping into lead singer Dr. Brian Briggs' background as a PhD of ornithology - Bonxie (the Hebridean nickname for the great Skua, a large seabird) is a chorus of birdsong from start to finish.
On their new record Stornoway also draws inspiration from stories of man's drive to explore and challenge one's limits. The track "Man On Wire" was inspired by the 2008 award winning documentary of the same name, in which French high wire artist
Philippe Petit walked a steel line covertly strung between New York's World Trade Center Towers. The epic "Heart of the Great Alone" was written after viewing an exhibition of Herbert Ponting's photos of
Captain Robert F. Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole 100 years ago. "We're trying to immerse people in the song as much as possible," explains guitarist Brian Briggs, "and in the natural world where the songs take place. Quite a few of the lyrics refer to man's position in the wider scheme of things."
Stornoway is Brian Briggs, Jon Ouin, Rob Steadman, and Oli Steadman.
Stornoway - Bonxie
1. Between The Saltmarsh and the Sea
2. Get Low
3. Man on Wire
4. The Road You Didn't Take
5. Lost Youth
6. Sing With Our Senses
7. When We Were Giants
8. When You're
Feeling Gentle
9.
Heart of the Great Alone
10. Josephine
11. Love Song of the Beta Male
