LEIF VOLLEBEKK, new album, New Ways, is out now via Secret City Records, has just announced a string of UK and Ireland tour dates, including a second at London’s Bush Hall after the first quickly sold out. Vollebekk, who has just finished a UK tour with fellow Montrealers Half Moon Run, now joins that band for further shows throughout Europe before returning to North America for a headline tour. Vollebekk will then play the following dates next spring:
Mon 27 April LONDON, Bush Hall (NEW SHOW!)
Tues 28 April LONDON, Bush Hall (SOLD OUT)
Weds 29 April BRISTOL, Exchange
Thurs 30 April MANCHESTER, Soup Kitchen
Fri 1 May GLASGOW, Poetry Club
Sat 2 May DUBLIN, Soundhouse
Vollebekk’s new album, New Ways is the sound of desire in its unfolding. A sonic documentation of everything he was feeling; tenderness and violence, sex and rebirth. “Anything that I wouldn’t ever want to tell anyone – I just put it on the record,” he says. Uncut gave it an 8/10 stating “Leif Vollebekk’s synesthesia is working overtime…the unhurried observational vividness of extended takes in a Linklater film. A self-described ‘recovering Dylanphile,’ Vollebekk relapses on the knotty Blood Brother and the panoramic Apalachee Plain, the bittersweet lilt of his voice all tangled up in blue,”. Rolling Stone France called it “his most elegant album yet,” while The Independent hailed it as “a collection of moments and confessions… heavy with poetic detail” in a 4 star review.
New Ways was recorded at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles and Studio Breakglass in Montreal, it features Olivier Fairfield (Timber Timbre) and Homer Steinweiss (The Dap-Kings, Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson) on drums, and additional vocals by Angie McMahon. It was mixed by Chris Allen in NYC (Yoko Ono, Fleet Foxes, Sigur Rós, Margaret Glaspy) and mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound (David Byrne, The War On Drugs, Gregory Alan Isakov, Tame Impala, Father John Misty, Bob Dylan, Patrick Watson).
Released in June, the album’s first single Hot Tears quickly chalked up over two million streams, the NY Times noting Vollebekk’s songs as “pensive and restless, blossoming with stream-of-consciousness verses that bear the marks of long nights spent alone on the road.”
The latest single from the album, meanwhile, Transatlantic Flight, takes its time as it wraps itself around the listener. Leif found inspiration for the song in a host of places, from the dark sizzle of Leonard Cohen to the visual mastery of Richard Linklater (he drops a couple of references in the opening verse of the song). It builds to a soaring euphoria, a wall of rich sounds and trembling strings as Leif pleads: “so why don’t you come on over / start talking to me / one thing I can tell you / you look good when you’re tired / on a Transatlantic flight.”
New Ways is the follow up to 2017’s Twin Solitude which was a breakout success, landing Vollebekk a spot on the Polaris Music Prize 2017 shortlist, a Juno nomination and clocking well over 23 million streams across digital streaming platforms.
