New York, NY (Top40 Charts) LYR - the new musical project comprised of musician Richard Walters, producer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Pearson and current UK Poet Laureate
Simon Armitage - release their new single "
The First Time", out today on Mercury KX/Universal Music. The track is the second single taken from their upcoming debut album, Call in the
Crash Team, out on 29th May. Having recently signed an exclusive record deal with Mercury KX, LYR also announce their live debut at London's Hoxton Hall on the 10th March and Leeds' Brudenell Social Club on the 9th March.
As with all 10 tracks on the new album, "
The First Time" is written from the viewpoint of a fictional character. A narrative recollection of a person's first sexual encounter, the track is a touching, easy-to-love midpoint between poetic spoken passages, electronic instrumentation and vocal melodies.
Speaking of the track, the band say, "The lyric imagines someone caught in a vortex of nostalgia a decade after their first meaningful romantic encounter with an old school friend on the pretext of revising for English Literature homework. The memory is ignited by the discover of an old Post-it note. Despite the longing for something lost, the speaker in the song still seems energized and excited by the recollection, and for a relationship that was spontaneous and secretive. The music is suitably ecstatic and melancholic in equal measures."
LYR thrive on the unexpected. As a genre-splicing supergroup of sorts, LYR is a nexus of diverse creative disciplines and one of the most thrilling musical prospects of 2020. Call in the
Crash Team is set to convert any previous sceptics of spoken word, thanks to Armitage's accessible lyrics and compelling voice — as well as Pearson's seductive bricolage of musical styles and Walters' evocative vocals.
The philosophy of sonic exploration manifests in the album's ambient post-rock passages, jazz flourishes, atonal experimentalism, as well as swoony strings and piano — and some more unusual instrument choices too, such as the kora (West African stringed instrument).
Breaking barriers and building unexpected bridges between different worlds is embedded in the core of LYR — and is a galvanizing philosophy for the band as they prepare to unveil their music to their world.
