Cold Years, have today released their new album, ‘Goodbye To Misery‘.
The ambitious follow-up to the acclaimed debut, Paradise (2020), was recorded by Neil Kennedy (Creeper, Boston Manor), Goodbye To Misery is 12 tracks born out of the want for a more positive future rather than the self-destruction and misery of its predecessor. “This record is us saying you can break away from those things that are bringing you down,” frontman Ross Gordon explains. “It’s about standing up for yourself and not letting anybody tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s a defiant statement.”
In addition to the album release, today Cold Years also release the music video for the poppy new single, ‘Hey Jane.’ “Everyone has a Jane,” Gordon says. “Whether it’s a partner, a friend, a place, a cat or a dog — like it’s this person or thing or place that is with you no matter what. And you sometimes never feel good enough for them/it but it doesn’t matter.”
This was probably coming. The dam was surely always going to break. Had you listened to Ross Gordon speak over the past few years, read between the lines of his lyrics, or paid attention to the more seething moments of Cold Years’ 2020 acclaimed debut album Paradise, you could have predicted that something had to give. As the incendiary spirit of the band’s new album Goodbye To Misery attests, “something” might be an understatement.
Everything has changed. This is the sound of the fight-or-flight kicking in, of deciding that enough is enough, and the trio — completed by guitarist Finlay Urquhart and bassist Louis Craighead — demanding better. Most importantly, it’s them doing something about it all. The time for pissing and moaning is done. As Gordon succinctly puts it, “I’m not self-destructive or miserable anymore.”
Of the 12 new songs that make up the record, only three were written in Aberdeen as Gordon picked up and moved to Glasgow to escape the suffocating environment he’s called home for his entire life. The tracks came out in a flurry of big city inspiration while Gordon, like millions of others in the UK, found himself on furlough. Because yes, the shadow that looms large over this story is the same one that continues to colour almost every aspect of all our daily lives. Forced, by lockdown, to share ideas with Craighead and Urquhart over email instead of letting things percolate in pubs over pints like they used to, the songs on Goodbye To Misery naturally shaped up in brand new ways. Infused with new energy and new feelings, the band decided to explore those impulses, stepping out of their collective comfort zones in the process.
