The Journey is the new album from Wet Wet Wet, their seventh LP but the first with singer Kevin Simm. Released on November 5th, it features the singles Back To Memphis & The Conversation. All twelve tracks on The Journey were written and recorded during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021; a process that the band at times found pushed them to their very limits, but the result is an album with the soul, feel and strength of songs that the band’s debut ‘Popped In Souled Out’ has.
Writing and recording during a worldwide pandemic and national lockdowns set Wet Wet Wet a unique set of challenges, bassist Graeme Clark elaborates “The way we would typically work is somebody has a piano line or something if you’re all there together, that works, but what happens when you can’t all come together?”
For singer Kevin Simm, who was writing and recording with the band for the very first time, the process was particularly tricky “It’s a testament to the talent within the band and willingness as well to just do it, to suck it up and commit to writing and recording this way. Some people just wouldn’t entertain the thought of not going in the studio and not having that luxury of someone else doing everything for you”.
During the first few writing sessions over Zoom and FaceTime the band developed a way of working that they would continue with for the rest of the album. Graeme Clark “The easiest way to describe what happened with The Journey is that people were bringing in half or three quarter finished songs and then throwing it over to the rest of the band.”
The Journey album will be released digitally and in several different physical formats: –
- Limited edition red coloured long playing 12-inch vinyl in a gatefold sleeve.
- Limited edition blue coloured cassette in a slipcase.
- Single CD in a digipack.
- Deluxe 2CD with a bonus CD featuring new recordings of the band’s most popular hits in a double digipack.
- Deluxe 3-Disc set with a bonus CD featuring new recordings of the band’s most popular hits as well as a DVD of Kevin’s first show with the band filmed at Saint Luke’s in Glasgow in November 2018. All in a beautiful hardback book.
