Boston Manor frontman 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. Arriving on September 6 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.
"'Heat Me Up' ended up being the first track we finished on the album," says Cox. "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 as a whole, 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 and would walk across the road to a meadow and just take naps in the sunshine when we weren't recording."
He continues, "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."
BOSTON MANOR are today announcing that their new album Sundiver is set for release on September 6 via SharpTone Records. Pre-order the album here.
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.
PHOTO CREDIT: Megan Doherty
