BOSTON MANOR are today announcing new album Sundiver for release on September 6th via SharpTone Records. News of the band’s fifth studio album arrives alongside the release of its lead single ‘HEAT ME UP’.
“Could you please open that window, let the new world in.” The sage simplicity of Sundiver’s opening lyrics says it all. Boston Manor front man Henry Cox is opening the next chapter of a story that began with 2022 album Datura. That record opened with the lines, “Do me a favour, close that window, keep the heating in, there’s a fire in the car park, I see it smouldering.” Sundiver, then, is the yin to Datura’s yang. Coming out on September 6th via SharpTone Records, Sundiver is Boston Manor’s fifth album and one that represents a glimmering dawn for the Blackpool five-piece. Grown from a seedbed of optimism and sobriety, the LP celebrates new beginnings, second chances and rebirth. With two members recently stepping into fatherhood, hope is baked into every note.
Like anything worth doing though, that hope has been hard-won. On Sundiver, change doesn’t just happen it is willed into existence, forged in the flame of grief and bent into shape with a hammer blow of positivity. Working with long-time producer Larry Hibbitt, alongside engineer Alex O’Donovan, the band switched recording from London to the leafier pastures of the home counties. There’s a brightness searching to get out of Sundiver that feels like a purposeful about-turn from the darkness of [2022 album] Datura.
This year’s pair of earlier single releases explored second chances (‘Container’) and ‘What If?’ scenarios (‘Sliding Doors’), bringing with them a refreshed mindset, the band clearly ready to create something immersive, embracing the unpredictable, glorious, devastating nature of life as a human being. Lyrics foxtrot from parallel universes to personal growth, vivid dreamscapes to raw grief. Individually they’re single strokes full of meaning and magic. Together they’re a landscape.
Lead singer Henry Cox comments on new single ‘HEAT ME UP’: “‘Heat Me Up’ ended up being the first track we finished on the album. We’d gone down to Welwyn Garden City where we were going to record the album to write and do some pre-production. It was actually our day off, it was a blistering hot day and we had nothing to do, so we had a barbecue in the garden and wrote a song. Sometimes tunes take months to write but this just flew right out in an afternoon. It’s a song about being utterly obsessed with someone and being grateful for what you have.”
Continuing about the album he says: “Sundiver is the culmination of two years work and four years of planning. Going into the pandemic we knew our next record would be a double album released in two parts, the first a short shadowy-noiry electronic record set over one night and the second a sprawling rock record that documents the following day. Both albums are products of their environments, we made Datura in the dead of winter in a windowless studio complex that mostly just produced techno, we’d enter before the sun rose and leave long after it set, basically never seeing sunlight. We made Sundiver in Welwyn Garden City over two summers, we barbecued every day & would walk across the road to a meadow and just take naps in the sunshine when we weren’t recording.
We’ve essentially been working on this album and building up to it since the pandemic. We were obsessed with trying to make a record that felt like blistering sunshine, or that wavy/hazy horizon you get when the pavement is super hot, but we didn’t want it to sound “happy” or “major key”. Sundiver is by far Boston Manor’s best and most ambitious record to date, and we couldn’t be happier with it, I really hope our fans love it as much as we do.”
Pre-order Sundiver here.
Hear ‘HEAT ME UP’ on streaming services here and share it via YouTube below.
Boston Manor 2024 live dates
Buy tickets here
19th June – Chalk, Brighton, UK
25th June – Reithalle, Dresden, DE
26th June – Hydrozagadka – Warsaw, PL
27th June – Rock Cafe, Prague, CZ
21st June – Hurricane Festival, Germany
22nd June – Southside Festival, Germany
23rd June – Full Force Festival, Germany
29th June – Vainstream Festival, Germany
30th June – Jera on Air, Netherlands
10th July – 2000 Trees Festival, UK
11th July – 2000 Trees Festival, UK
23rd Aug – Brisbane (Trophy Eyes support)
24th Aug – Sydney (Trophy Eyes support)
30th Aug – Adelaide (Trophy Eyes support)
31 Aug – Melbourne (Trophy Eyes support)
September UK headline tour dates
18th Sept – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
19th Sept – O2 Ritz, Manchester, UK
20th Sept – Project House, Leeds, UK
22nd Sept – SWG3, Glasgow, UK
24th Sept – SWX, Bristol, UK
25th Sept – Engine Rooms, Southampton, UK
26th Sept – XOYO, Birmingham, UK
27th Sept – O2 Kentish Town Forum, London, UK
Boston Manor – Sundiver album tracklisting
1. Datura (Dawn)
2. Container
3. Sliding Doors
4. HEAT ME UP
5. Horses In A Dream
6. Morning Star
7. Why I Sleep
8. Fornix
9. Dissolve
10. What Is Taken, Will Never Be Lost
11. DC Mini (feat. Heriot)