After All Of The Days We Will Disappear is Andrew Eaton-Lewis’s debut album. It is also his sixth album, his 44th album, and probably his final album.
Since 2018 Andrew has been living on a former RAF radar station in the Outer Hebrides, along with his family, chickens, a small flock of rare breed sheep, and a sheepdog. Previously he lived in Edinburgh, where, as Seafieldroad and a member of the band Swimmer One, his songs found their way to daytime Radio One, a Hollywood movie, and numerous festivals, theatre shows and short films. He was one of the core creative team behind the award-winning multi-media project Whatever Gets You Through The Night, performing with Emma Pollock, Ricky Ross, RM Hubbert and Rachel Sermanni, among others (a project he recently revived as part of the first Hebridean Dark Skies Festival on Lewis). His own music has won widespread acclaim from critics, who have variously compared it to John Cale, Belle and Sebastian, the Pet Shop Boys and the Blue Nile. All this activity sprang from a teenage obsession with music that resulted in Andrew’s first 38 ‘albums’ – almost 40 hours of unreleased home recordings made between the ages of 15 and 21.
After All Of The Days We Will Disappear, the first music Andrew has released in five years, is part reinvention, part retrospective, a collection of new songs and old songs made new, exploring the various ways in which human beings move from one place to another – from a city to an island, from childhood to adulthood, through the seasons of the year, and from life to death (the title is an attempt to describe death by Andrew’s four-year-old son).
The tone is set by the opening and closing tracks – Medicine, a new song shaped by recent grief, and Dead Orchestras, a complete reworking of the title track from Swimmer One’s second album, about the things we leave behind for the next generation. Enchanted / Alright is a very modern take on two classics (by Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein) that had a special resonance for Andrew’s parents, whose deaths in 2014 and 2017 prompted him to help keep the family name alive by releasing an album under his own name for the first time. The song that says they’re gone ventures deeper into the theme, imagining what kind of music will be left behind when humanity has disappeared. Andrew’s own journey from Edinburgh to Lewis is described in The path, the beach, the sea, a 12 minute song cycle that travels from Leith to Portobello and on to the Hebrides, punctuated by field recordings from Scotland’s east and west coasts and the Ullapool to Stornoway ferry.
Production on After All Of The Days We Will Disappear is by Hamish Brown, Andrew’s long-time musical collaborator and Swimmer One band mate. The cover photograph is a still from a short film shot in Edinburgh, Ullapool and the Hebrides to accompany the album’s opening song, Medicine; the film is directed by Daniel Warren, whose diverse portfolio includes projects for Biffy Clyro, Scottish Ballet, Hanna Tuulikki and Kirsty Law.
The album will be available from Monday 28 October 2019 via iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc; it can also be bought directly from the artist via the project website, www.allofthedays.co.uk. The website is also home to All of the Days, a series of short essays inspired by all of the songs that Andrew, a former arts journalist, has released since 2002, and wryly reflecting on everything from Brian Wilson and Michael Jackson to climate change and national identity.
The album will be launched with a live show in the week of release at Faclan: the Hebridean Book Festival.
When he’s not making music, Andrew programmes festivals, produces theatre shows, and develops new arts projects for the Mental Health Foundation and his own Lewis-based company, sruth-mara. Most recently, as part of his work for An Lanntair arts centre on Lewis, he programmed the first Hebridean Dark Skies Festival. For sruth-mara he is currently developing a stage version of Alastair McIntosh’s Lewis-set memoir Soil & Soul with playwright Alan Bissett.
Responses to previous work
‘A lovely album. A late contender for one of the best of the year.’ – Gideon Coe, 6 Music
‘It’s the sort of record that they – the Mark Eitzels and the Paddy McAloons – used to make… an adult pop record with heart and brains.’ The Guardian ‘Captivating to the point of hypnosis.’ Drowned in Sound
‘This album will either win the Mercury Prize or vanish into cherished cult obscurity. It’s so good it deserves no compromise in between.’ Sunday Herald
Released Oct 2019
Cat No: BIPH13CD
- Medicine
- The White Noise
- Don’t Let The Winter Freeze Your Heart
- The Song That Says They’re Gone
- Hanging
- Enchanted / Alright
- The Path, The Beach, The Sea (A Song Cycle)
- Dead Orchestras