Document Actions
Runout Groove
Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time
1. Another Time
2. Driving Somewhere
3. A Dream Of A Girl
4. Desert Shore
5. Dark Squadrons
6. Until I Kissed You
7. Aldermaston
8. Pruning The Vine
9. Happy Go Lucky
10. Parliament Hill Fields
11. No Direction
12. The Kite and the Sky
Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time releases their first album in five years, Runout Groove though ? on Monday 22nd October.
In the late 70s, Stephen fronted an early incarnation of Duran Duran. In the 1980s, he briefly became a pop star, made an experimental album about MDMA, ran away to the country and formed The Lilac Time. In the 1990s, he made a great undiscovered prog-pop album with Nigel Kennedy, lost and found himself in Alaska and returned to Camden. In 2002 he released the highly acclaimed Keep Going and in 2004 co-wrote and co-produced Robbie William’s most successful album “Intensive Care.”
You might say Runout Groove is Stephen’s most contented set of songs, except that the easy listening connotations might, at times, be misleading. True, there’s a song called Happy Go Lucky on here – a title drily suggested by a friend who heard his last album. The song draws a line between the suburban life from which he ran away and the complicated one from which he can’t bear to retreat: “I hated my labour/And I hated my life/I got drunk on that hatred/And made her my wife” Well, it’s probably not what his friend had in mind, but it is, by way of compensation, one of the best songs to ever bear the Lilac Time imprint.
Claire Worrall’s voice can be heard on the yearning drivetime pop of first single Driving Somewhere and Aldermaston. Quoting Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger along the way, the latter song sees Stephen attempting to make sense of a world which has changed alarmingly little since the third Aldermaston march drew crowds larger than V.E. Day and the Coronation: “I was born along the Aldermaston March/Now I’m older and still marching through the dark.” Amid all this, the album’s sole cover, Don Everly’s Until I Kissed You, comes on like the morning glory of a sunny Sunday you thought you might never see again.
Alongside comparative Lilac Time veterans such as mulit-intrumentalist & vocalist Claire Worrall is Stephen’s ever-present brother Nick and jazz-folk icon Danny Thompson.
The Lilac Time’s next release (WHEN ?), also entitled Runout Groove, will take the form of a DVD telling the story of Stephen and The Lilac Time up until this point and will include footage of the bands appearance at the Green Man Festival last month.
Release Date:
2007/10/22 18:00:00 GMT-5
