John Grant shares two new tracks from “Love Is Magic”

With his new album Love Is Magic due out 12th October via Bella Union, John Grant has today shared two tracks from the LP… “He’s Got His Mother’s Hips”, recalls an 80’s electro–clash deep cut that, in John’s words, is “about a cheeseball doing all he can to seduce a woman and making a total ass of himself. It’s a fun song built on disgust.” Listen below…

On the other end of the spectrum is the elegant and heart-breaking album closer “Touch & Go”. That song is a story centred around Chelsea Manning, the former US soldier turned WikiLeaks activist who transitioned to a woman while in prison. “I was very intrigued by her incredible story,” says Grant. “What kind of strength does it take to survive something like that while being decried as a traitor and a pervert for whom death is too good”. Listen below…

With his fourth solo album Love Is Magic, Grant has continued to evolve, creating his most electronic record yet, in collaboration with Benge (Ben Edwards), analogue synth expert/collector and a member of electronic trio Wrangler, Grant’s collaborators earlier this year under the collective name of Creep Show on the album Mr Dynamite.

Produced by Grant (together with Benge and Paul Alexander), and engineered by Benge at his Cornish studio, the diamond-hard, diamond-gleaming Love Is Magic, “is closer still to how I’ve always wanted my records to sound, but I didn’t know how to go about it,” Grant says. Besides the quest for sound, “the lyrics, of course, continue to be very important to me,” says John. “They’re just snapshots of everyday life where myriad moods and every sort of horrible and hilarious occurrence one can imagine mix with the pedestrian resulting in the absurdity and beauty of life.”

Love Is Magic is released 12th October via Bella Union in the UK/Europe and Partisan in the US.