British duo Cloud Boat will release their highly anticipated second album Model Of You Stateside on the 15th of July 2014, through Apollo Records.
This follows the 2013 release of their critically acclaimed debut album Book Of Hours, which was hailed as one of the best albums of the year by Clash, This Is Fake DIY and The 405. Today they share a non-album track, a stark cover of The Smiths’ classic “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” via Stereogum.
Recently NPR premiered the video of the album’s first single “Carmine,” which is available now through iTunes.
London born and bred Sam Ricketts and Tom Clarke begun as part of the generation for whom electronic production and songwriting were no longer separate worlds, like their childhood friend James Blake, apart from Sam and Tom were proud teenage metal fans.
What Sam and Tom have done with Model Of You is bring their two worlds together to create an album of ambitious proportions which is cleverly delicate and honestly profound.
One listen to Model of You tells you that Cloud Boat are not the band they were 12 months ago. Richer, heavier, more adventurous, this is an emotional record that finds Tom and Sam untethering themselves from their past and sailing into deeper waters. The man charged with helping Cloud Boat navigate this new course was Andy Savours, the English producer who’d worked with a number of the pair’s favorite bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Sigur Rós and The Horrors. The three recorded in four London studios, including Crouch End’s The Crypt, part of the same church complex recently acquired by Paul Epworth, and formerly owned by Dave Stewart.
On tour in Europe earlier this year, Cloud Boat’s Sam Ricketts and Tom Clarke headed to a tattoo parlour in Berlin with their live guitarist Andres Perea to each get the same tattoo. The image, a simple hand-drawn illustration depicting the band’s name, was taken from a poster promoting a Cloud Boat show at Hamburg’s famous Golden Pudel club, one of their favorite venues.
For Tom, who is covered in tattoos, and Sam, who had none, the marking came to symbolize the pair’s commitment to their band and to celebrate all they’d achieved over the last 12 months. More than that, though, the tattoo was literally a sign of confidence: deep down, they knew they’d just made an excellent second album.
“It’s bold, bigger, and more ambitious,” says Sam of Model of You, “If our first album was dark and a little weird, then this one feels more optimistic and expansive.”
TOUR DATES:
23 Jun St Pancras Old Church, London
5 Jul PITCH festival, Amsterdam
26 Jul Greenville Festival, Berlin
27 Jul Tramlines, Sheffield
4 Oct Bermuda Triangle, Brighton
5 Oct The Yardbird, Birmingham
7 Oct Louisiana, Bristol
11 Oct Soup Kitchen, Manchester
12 Oct Shipping Forecast, Liverpool
13 Oct Nation Of Shopkeepers, Leeds
14 Oct Think Tank, Newcastle
16 Oct Broadcast, Glasgow
Cloud Boat
Model of You
(Apollo)
Street Date: July 15, 2014
Prelude
Hideaway
Carmine
Portraits Of Eyes
Bricks Are For
The Glow
Golden Lights
Aurelia
Thoughts In Mine
Told You
All Of My Years
Hallow
CLOUD BOAT LINKS: