Info
- Last Train
- The Shit Hits the Fan
- Running Round in Circles
- One in a Million
- Friday Night
- Fire Engines Blue Trains and Trucks
- Fly if You Want To
- Armageddon #4
- Everyone’s Gone to France
Andy’s 2019 studio album takes over from where his previous release The Guilty & The Innocent left off. It zooms out to come to terms with the big picture we’re all faced with — socially, politically, personally. The album’s subtitle is, “It’s our world, and this is how I see it”.
The Guilty & The Innocent names names in nine short acoustic rock ‘n’ roll songs, then the title track steps back, realising that judgement is part of the problem and that “the guilty and the innocent are the same as you and me”.
Time is a Buffalo in the Art of War takes that thought and puts it on the Last Train out of the UK along with a troupe of characters hurtling through the night.
The Shit Hits the Fan confronts the reality of the situation in a series of questions—and Running Round in Circles is our current response.
One in a Million starts outside a Flinders Street 7/11 and leads to Great Victoria Street bus station in Belfast and a wild Friday Night.
Fire Engines Blue Trains and Trucks moves from toy cars to smart bombs and leaves us on the dark side of the moon. Fly if You Want To, an evening when something was in the air.
Armageddon #4 is another powerful closing track, freedom marching for “a better future than today”.
By the time Everyone’s Gone To France arrives, you have to work out whether the Last Train made it across the Channel.
The album features an orchestra, a brass section, Andy’s son Sebastian on drums and Rod McVey—multi-instrumentalist and co-producer of Andy’s early albums—for the first time since 1996. Andy writes,
“I had finished throwing things at the telly and pointed my finger at the sky. I was listening to Imagine, feeling the power of truth being able to turn around an apparently hope-free situation. The strength of our aspirations towards freedom. I was listening to The War on Drugs’ big sound, guitar solos, songs stretching out as far as they wanted to. If you have a lot to say, take all the time you want to say it. That’s what I’ve tried to do here. This is the big picture. Give it time. And I hope you can play it loud, the way it was made. The Buffalo? I dreamed the title and in the morning my dream came true.”
