In 2005, Welwyn Garden City three-piece, The Subways crashed onto the UK rock scene with their, now cult, debut album ‘Young For Eternity’ and international party mix tape classic ‘Rock & Roll Queen’. Five consecutive years at Reading & Leed’s festival along with appearances at Glastonbury and T in the Park quickly cemented their reputation as festival favourites.
The band were flying high! However… in 2007 Billy was forced to undergo surgery to cure nodules on his vocals chords , caused by strenuous touring. Suddenly the band’s very existence was in doubt. When Lunn eventually made a full recovery, The Subways headed to Los Angeles to record their second album with Butch Vig. (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth). The result, a sonically enormous, harder edged sophomore album ‘All Or Nothing’ which reflects the bands fight to survive. Lunn’s worries and frustration about being told he may never sing again alongside the emotional impact of the break up of his and Cooper’s long term personal relationship feature throughout the 2nd album.
With eight years rocking under their belts and still only an average age of 24, this explosive UK three are back! Billy Lunn, Charlotte Cooper and Josh Morgan are set for a September 2011 release of their third album ‘Money and Celebrity’ to coincide with a huge tour schedule with gig booked to run well into 2012 and beyond. Recorded and mixed by famed producer Stephen Street this explosive UK pop/rock record melds their debut’s melodic, pop/punk immediacy with the highly energetic, rock power of 2008’s ‘All Or Nothing’
The simple beginnings of this album came from Billy “I was recording in the front room of my flat, getting up in the middle of the night to record vocal and guitar parts or sitting in front of the TV with my acoustic guitar and picking up on things that both excited and annoyed me: the circus of the celebrity rise and breakdown, love and loneliness, partying hard (sometimes too hard!), big money and the impact the financial crisis is having on us all ” This writing inspired much of the album with tracks like, soon to be teenage anthem, “We Don’t Need Money To Have A Good Time” written as a tonic to this crisis. And melodic album centrepiece ‘Popdeath’, a comment on the fast turn over of TV show generated celebrity.
The band admits writing and rejecting fifty or more songs before settling on twelve self recorded demos to send to their first choice producer Stephen Street. Billy comments that “Stephen liked our demo tracks so much that he ended up using them as a template for the main recording, even using some guitar and vocal parts from the home demos in the final mixes”
The band states that “There is nothing more exciting for us than being on tour. We never want to do anything else. To get up onstage and to play rock and roll every day, to visit new towns, new cities, new countries, new continents and to make new friends along the way, It’s the most amazing experience we’ve ever felt. We will rock till we drop!” Tracks off the new album, such as ‘It’s A Party’ and ‘I Wanna Dance With You’ were written with “A huge hunger to get up onstage and get everyone going absolutely nuts!” and that “The greatest drug in the world is seeing people screaming the words to songs you’ve written, dancing to the drums, clapping to your rhythms and screaming when you ask them to!”.
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