The car-radio favourite of last summer, Red Rum Club’s Eleanor is the first sound of spring from the Liverpool six-piece, as they announce the release of The Hollow Sessions, an album of acoustic tracks that brings the band’s dancefloor-filling sound into the chill out room. With each track drawn from their first two albums, The Hollow Of Humdrum and Matador, the band’s return to the studio to go unplugged closes the band’s first chapter, where the wild live shows came and went, but the music kept coming.
Having jumped onto the BBC Radio 2 Playlist in July of last year, Eleanor became one of the most Shazamed tracks in the UK that month as listeners from Breakfast to Drivetime scrambled to find who had made the infectious, pool party-starting anthem of the summer. Originally intended to be the hands-high anthem for last year’s festival fields, the song instead poured into the public’s homes and hearts with its peppy message of love when times get hard.
The Hollow Of Humdrum, originally released last October, found the band coming off the back of a long year of UK and European touring and heading straight to the studio to create, by their own admission, a more mature and varied follow up to their 2019 debut, Matador. With every member quoting Arctic Monkeys as a key influence, critics picked up on the band’s wider range of real-life lyrics and confidence in finding a mellower pace in songs such as Brando.
The Hollow Sessions will be released digitally via Modern Sky on Fri 30 April 2021, with the band promising more surprises and announcements on new music in the very near future.
Fran Doran, the band’s front man, says: “It’s been a rollercoaster for us all and while the ride still isn’t over, we’re all hoping for the best and hope more than anything that we’ll be on stage again by late summer. Between now and then, The Hollow Sessions presents new versions of the songs we’re really proud of, but we’re not done there. The only way can be up, can’t it?”
Despite the global pandemic stopping Red Rum Club doing what they do best, their recordings have proved to not only be a more than adequate distraction for them and their fans, whilst not completely quelling the pain of being kept apart. Looking ahead the band has a mammoth run of 30 live UK dates, including confirmed post-Covid festivals, confirmed.
The full run of Red Rum Club dates for 2021 are as follows:
- Tue 10 Aug Cardiff The Tramshed^
- Wed 11 Aug Leicester O2 Academy^
- Fri 13 Aug Keele SU^
- Sat 14 Aug Liverpool Guild^
- Tue 17 Aug Glasgow O2 Academy^
- Thu 19 Aug Norwich The Waterfront^
- Fri 20 Aug Brixton Academy^
- Sun 5 Sep NBHD Manchester*
- Fri 10 Sep TRNSMT
- Tue 28 Sep Newcastle Riverside
- Wed 29 Sep Glasgow King Tuts
- Thu 30 Sep Hull Adelphi
- Fri 1 Oct Blackpool Bootleg Social
- Sat 2 Oct Sound City Liverpool*
- Sun 3 Oct Leeds Brudenell
- Mon 4 Oct York Crescent
- Tue 5 Oct London Lafayette
- Wed 6 Oct Milton Keynes Crauford Arms
- Fri 8 Oct Bedford Esquires
- Sat 9 Oct Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach
- Sun 10 Oct Brighton Patterns
- Mon 11 Oct Bournemouth Anvil
- Wed 13 Oct Bristol Thelka
- Thu 14 Oct Truro Old Bakery
- Fri 15 Oct Exeter Cavern
- Sat 16 Oct Oxford O2 Academy
- Mon 18 Oct Birmingham O2 Institute 3
- Tue 19 Oct Sheffield O2 Academy 2
- Wed 20 Oct Huddersfield Parish
- Thu 21 Oct Manchester Club Academy
- Sat 23 Oct Liverpool Mountford Hall
