Welcome back! Come celebrate live audiences returning The Linda at the Open for Business Concert Series. OFB features the home-grown outstanding performers of the Capital Region, special guests and you. Let’s do this.

Doctor Baker started out as an acoustic duo featuring singer-songwriter Ed Schwarzschild and guitarist Iggy Calabria, two wayward Philadelphians who met in Albany, NY. After adding Danny Goodwin on drums, Jim Maximowicz on bass, and Chris Gockley on guitar/bass, Doctor Baker sounds a lot louder, and the band’s strong, sound medicine has begun to heal audiences in the Capital Region and beyond.

with special guest Comic Michael Brigante

VERMONT ROOTS ROADSHOW–LIVE MUSIC

SATURDAY SESSIONS: WINTER ANIMALS

Tuesday, September 28

Empire Live

7pm doors * 8pm show
ORVILL PECK

Tickets $25 adv/$30 day of on sale Friday, July 30 at 10am

Orville Peck is country music’s newest outlaw. His handmade, fringed masks, which obscure his features except for a pair of ice blue eyes, belie his deeply personal lyrics, while his ornate Nudie suits recall the golden age of country. Peck’s masks and theatric stage presence immediately grab audience attention, similar to the way Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash’s larger-than-life images captured him as a young man. However, it’s his voice and his songwriting, influenced by Parton, Loretta Lynn, Townes Van Zandt, and Gram Parsons, that have captivated a fan base as extensive and diverse as his musical tastes. Citing artists from Ernest Tubb (the first country artist to use an electric guitar at the Grand Ole Opry) to Kacey Musgraves, Peck says, ”Every decade or so, there comes a new batch of artists that shake up the question of ‘what is country?’ “I’m in the middle of that more often than not these days. I kind of like it, because I think I’m in good company.”

Doors at 7 / Music at 8
$15 advance / $20 day of show
18+

Featuring Mik Bondy, Dan Crea, Smiley Engleson and Kat Walkerson performing two sets of acoustic Grateful Dead, Beatles, Bob Dylan and more! Listen to the music and feel the love and energy that reminds us all about the wonderful, cosmic scene that revolves around The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band. Kat and Mik are founding members of The Garcia Project (Nationally touring Jerry Garcia Band Tribute) and have performed live with Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band), David Gans (Grateful Dead XM Radio Host) and Tom Constanten (Keyboardist for The Grateful Dead)

ON THEIR 16TH STUDIO ALBUM,

Indigo Girls tell their origin story. They have reunited with their strongest backing band to date to create Look Long—a stirring and eclectic collection of songs that finds the duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers chronicling their personal upbringings with more specificity and focus than they have on any previous song-cycle. These eleven songs have a tender, revealing motion to them, as if they’re feeding into a Super 8 film projector, illuminating a darkened living room: Saliers Ray are tackling the mechanisms of perspective. “We’re fallible creatures shaped by the physics of life,” says Saliers. “We’re shaped by our past; what makes us who we are? And why?” In this moment of delirious upheaval, Look Long considers the tremendous potential of ordinary life and suggests the possibility that an honest survey of one’s past and present, unburdened by judgement, can give shape to something new—the promise of a way forward. With the energy of an expanding, loyal audience beneath their feet, a weather eye toward refinement, and an openness to redefinition, Indigo Girls exemplify that promise.

 
Plans for Look Long materialized over morning tea with producer John Reynolds (Sinéad O’Connor, Damien Dempsey) on a stop during the duo’s recent, sold-out tour of the United Kingdom. “We were talking about life and music and by the end of breakfast we’d reached the conclusion that it was time to make another record together,” says Ray. Their relationship with Reynolds dates back to the summer of 1998 during the second Lilith Fair Tour when a shared main stage headlining slot with Sinéad O’Connor and her formidable backing band featuring Reynolds on drums, bassist Clare Kenny, keyboardist Carol Isaacs, cellist Caroline Dale, and lead guitar player Justin Adams blossomed into deep, mutual admiration, friendships, and eventually, collaboration. Ray has called the relationship, “one of the most important moments in our musical growth.” The group recorded Indigo Girls’ next album, 1999’s Come On Now Social, with Reynolds acting as both producer and drummer, before embarking on a worldwide tour together. Twenty years later, with the addition of longtime touring violinist Lyris Hung, Look Long marks the complete return of the lineup Saliers calls, “our musical compass.”

 
Tracking commenced in early January 2019 at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, a state-of-the-art recording studio tucked into the English countryside outside the city of Bath. “Emily and I were so excited by John’s arrangements,” Ray remembers. “It was a good lesson in trust.” Before flying to England, the two had agreed, “Whatever happens in the studio will happen,” says Saliers. “A lot of magic unfolded because of that decision.”

 
A similar magic unfolded in 1989 when their eponymous major label debut shifted over two million units under the power of “Closer to Fine” and “Kid Fears” and turned Indigo Girls into one of the most successful folk duos in history. Over a thirty-five-year career that began in clubs around their native Atlanta, Georgia, the Grammy-winning duo has recorded sixteen studio albums (seven gold, four platinum, one double platinum), sold over 15 million records, and built a dedicated, enduring following. Collaborations with a new generation of devoted peers like Brandi Carlile, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Sierra Hull, and Matt Nathanson continue to bring newcomers to Indigo Girls’ audience. Says Vernon about growing up with Indigo Girls’ music, “I adored them more and more—the more they had strength in the face of their adversity…They’re my favorite group ever.” Committed and uncompromising activists, they work on issues like immigration reform (El Refugio), LGBTQ advocacy, education (Imagination Library), death penalty reform, and Native American rights. They are co-founders of Honor the Earth, a non-profit dedicated to the survival of sustainable Native communities, Indigenous environmental justice, and green energy solutions.

 
“I told myself I wasn’t going to put boundaries around what should be an Indigo Girls song,” Ray says of writing album opener “Shit Kickin’.” The funky, back road-strut is both a love letter to her Southern heritage and a refusal to be complacent about the region’s legacy of prejudice and racism. “Damn that trickery / it got the best of me,” Ray sings over Saliers’ slide guitar, “I’m gonna tear it down and start again.”

 
“Everyone I know can sense Armageddon,” sings Saliers on title track “Look Long,” a masterful display of her compositional grace that coalesces past, present, and future into a unified perspective. “People feel lost in these political times,” she says. In the memory of her grandmother, “a Nixon Republican” who let the grandkids drink from her “Apollo Mission glasses / etched in red, white, and blue commemoration,” Saliers depicts an all but vanished form of American identity. She’s a patriot in the grand tradition of Woody Guthrie; “Look Long” is both a lament and a prayer of hope for the country she loves. “Look long / Look long,” she repeats over a soft, arpeggiating piano figure. “It means let’s lament our limitations, but let’s also look beyond what’s right in front of us, take the long view of things, and strive to do better.” 

 
Ray is equally focused on the search for common ground on “Muster,” a frank accounting of the American gun-violence epidemic she began writing after seeing a televised town hall meeting held in Parkland, Florida. “I was struck by these citizens’ willingness to meet and try in earnest to have a dialogue between the two sides.” She asks, “Is this the best we could muster / Custer or just prayers for the slain / I wanna get this right and not the same ole thing.”

 
Saliers’ angular electric guitar intro sends a current through “Change My Heart,” a rocker that pairs politics and physics. “The four fundamental forces came to play / In the American schism,” she sings. “I was reading about electromagnetism and gravitational law…we are physical beings, we vibrate. And we can achieve higher vibrations, so to speak.” Pulsing with psychedelic guitars and organ layers, “Change My Heart” does just that.

 
Saliers and Ray both became parents (each a daughter) since their last studio album; the experience permeates these songs of self-discovery. The twist-time, B-52s-tinged “Favorite Flavor” evolved out of a game of call and response between Amy and her daughter. “When I’m writing, she’ll come sit with me and play along on a drum or shaker. She knows I have a candy jar on my writing table,” laughs Ray. “One day we were singing back and forth about candy and fun things and I recorded it on my phone. I listened to the recording a lot when I missed her; I liked the way she interjected the words “dark, pink cherry” in just the right places and I started to realize there was the beginning of a real song there.” The song took on a more serious tone as Ray continued to write. “I’m a left-winger in a conservative county and a parent of a kid who loves playdates. It was hard to explain to her why my neighbors had stopped letting their kids wander down our gravel driveway to play.”

 
“I wrote about something that I’d been afraid to write about my entire life,” says Saliers of her elegy for her younger sister, “Sorrow and Joy.” “We have to hold these opposites in life. It’s the secret, it’s the key, it’s the way that things are made—by opposing forces that inform each other. I was looking at her photo, thinking how strange it is that when someone dies young, they’re forever frozen in your mind as youthful. The contradictory emotion of seeing their vibrancy and knowing that they’re gone.” 

 
“Howl at the Moon” is a joyful, rallying-cry for personal liberation. It began on a late-night walk around Athens, Ga after a 14-hour drive from Indianapolis on her recent solo tour. “I was feeling old, tired, and hungry. Everything I was thinking about as I walked ended up in this song: an apology, a confessional, and a quest for liberation—for all of us, regardless of age, gender, race, or sexuality.” Reynolds’ rhythmic approach brings the lyric to life in a “glorious swirl” of mandolin jangle and clever counter-melodies. “It’s a world of sounds and movement for a song about overcoming all the boundaries that hold us back and freeing ourselves from the pain we get mired in” says Ray.

 
“I wanna be that boy / I wanna be that girl / I wanna know what it’s like to fall in love like most of the rest of the world,” Saliers aches over a lovely layer of strings on “Country Radio.” “This is the way I felt doing those four-hour drives from Nashville, listening to country music radio,” she says. “I could almost put my own life story in these songs, but I can’t. There are gender divisions and heteronormative realities. There’s a lot of self-homophobia that I’ve had to work on in my own life that plays into this as well.” Indigo Girls have been previewing “Country Radio” in their live set; “I can tell it’s resonating with people; when I get to that line, ‘I’m just a gay kid who loves country radio,’ there’s an audible verbal response from the audience,” says Saliers.

 
Ray was reflecting on ride share apps when she penned “K.C. Girl,” a power pop, suburban nocturne. “It’s a transaction built on trust but also detachment. Even in silence, you’re both leaving clues about who you are. No one wants to be read the wrong way.”

 
“When We Were Writers” is a pop-savvy ode to what Saliers calls “the two most influential years of my life” spent at Tulane University in New Orleans. “Amy and I were starting to embark on really what was the beginning of our career,” remembers Saliers. “Today, we joke about being old, but what is old when it comes to music? We’re still a bar band at heart. We are so inspired by younger artists and while our lyrics and writing approach may change, our passion for music feels the same as it did when we were 25-years-old.”

 
“As time has gone on, our audience has become more expansive and diverse, giving me a sense of joy,” she adds. To hear those collective voices raise into one, singing along and overpowering the band itself, one realizes the importance Indigo Girls’ music has in this moment. In our often-terrifying present, we are all in search of a daily refuge, a stolen hour or two, to engage with something that brings us joy, perspective, or maybe just calm. As one bar band once put it, “We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains…we go to the Bible, we go through the work out.” For millions, they go to Indigo Girls. On Look Long they’ll find a creative partnership certain of its bearings, forging a way forward.

We’re incredibly sad to announce that we are forced to postpone all dates in 2021 until next year due to ongoing personal circumstances. We’re very sorry for any inconvenience; this is not a decision that we’ve taken lightly and we’re hurting at the thought of letting you down. We’re working hard to reschedule all dates with our team & they’ll be another announcement soon. All tickets will remain valid for the new dates. 
Thank you for understanding & for the show of support you’ve shown us.
Love R&R&M 

Join SVAC for the return of live music to the Arkell main stage with an afternoon of Blues on Saturday, August 7th. Organized by Paul E. Benjamin, founder of the North Atlantic Blues Festival, they bring you this special series of blistering Blues performances.

12:00 pm: Alexis P. Suter

1:30 pm: The Bruce Katz Band

3:00 pm: James Armstrong

4:30 pm: Johnny Rawls

“They are not merely the world’s best hip-hop band—but one of the great musical outfits of our time.” — Rolling Stone

Formed in 1987 in Philadelphia, PA, The Roots have become one of the best known and most respected hip-hop acts in the business. Named one of the “50 Greatest Live Acts” by Rolling Stone, The Roots became the official house band on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” where they currently perform every Monday-Friday.

Make a Plan

• This performance will take place outside, in MASS MoCA’s Joe’s Field and will be held rain or shine.
• Preferred ticket holders have access to a gated standing room section close to the stage and receive museum admission on the day of the show.
• No outside food or beverages will be allowed in the venue during the event. Food and drinks are available for purchase during the show.
• All events at MASS MoCA are accessible to all audiences. Please contact boxoffice@massmoca.org if you would like to inquire about accessibility needs and services.
• Please note, museum admission is not included with your event ticket unless indicated. Purchase museum admission here.
• By purchasing a ticket to join MASS MoCA’s visitors, staff, and artists on the museum campus, you agree to follow a Courtesy Code, detailed here. Our full COVID FAQ is here.

This three day, multi-band event will feature several of the premiere touring bands currently on the festival circuit. Located at the beautiful Charles R. Wood Festival Commons in the heart of Lake George, NY, the festival prides itself on high-quality production and an amazing atmosphere that is suitable for all ages.  We will also have an incredible beer and wine selection, a full bar and the circuit’s finest food and merchandise vendors. 

moe. – 2 nights/2 sets per night
Twiddle
Prince Bowie: Performing the music of Prince & David Bowie
Roots Of Creation
Kung Fu
Lucid
Bella’s Bartok
Eggy
Neighbor
Dogs In A Pile
Annie In The Water
Baked Shrimp
Hartley’s Encore

This three day, multi-band event will feature several of the premiere touring bands currently on the festival circuit. Located at the beautiful Charles R. Wood Festival Commons in the heart of Lake George, NY, the festival prides itself on high-quality production and an amazing atmosphere that is suitable for all ages.  We will also have an incredible beer and wine selection, a full bar and the circuit’s finest food and merchandise vendors. 

moe. – 2 nights/2 set per night
Twiddle
Prince Bowie: Performing the music of Prince & David Bowie
Roots Of Creation
Kung Fu
Lucid
Bella’s Bartok
Eggy
Neighbor
Dogs In A Pile
Annie In The Water
Baked Shrimp
Hartley’s Encore

This three day, multi-band event will feature several of the premiere touring bands currently on the festival circuit. Located at the beautiful Charles R. Wood Festival Commons in the heart of Lake George, NY, the festival prides itself on high-quality production and an amazing atmosphere that is suitable for all ages.  We will also have an incredible beer and wine selection, a full bar and the circuit’s finest food and merchandise vendors. 

moe. – 2 nights/2 sets per night
Twiddle
Prince Bowie: Performing the music of Prince & David Bowie
Roots Of Creation
Kung Fu
Lucid
Bella’s Bartok
Eggy
Neighbor
Dogs In A Pile
Annie In The Water
Baked Shrimp
Hartley’s Encore

The Backseat Lovers w/s/g Sleepy Gonzales

The Hollow – 79 North Pearl St.
Albany, New York 12207

Tickets are $15 Adv | $18 Day of show. On sale through www.ticketweb.com

All tickets purchased or won for this show will be honored for the new date, 3/12/22

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS
From its exhilarating opening bars, Made Of Rain – the first Psychedelic Furs album in 29
years – sounds like them and them alone. It’s a joy to hear again, fresher than ever, that
unique mesh of sounds and layers, that fusion of smooth and stark, of restraint and
abandon, of melancholy and rage, of optimism and nihilism, of tough and tender. Their
ageless charisma flows anew. “It’s got that depth and weight of sound”, says Richard Butler
as 2020 begins. Talking about the first track, The Boy That Invented Rock & Roll, he suggests,
“It’s saying rock & roll was born out of feelings like these…”the ticking veins, this godless dark ,
the druggy days, the pointless pain…a bag of tears where love is gone”. In a way it’s about Elvis
Presley and all those people, but not just any individuals – it’s the feelings which rock & roll,
for me, comes from. And of course rock & roll has a great deal of sexuality involved too. The
boy is…an idea: I’m not claiming that position for myself!”
The Psychedelic Furs may not have invented rock & roll per se, but their influence since
arriving on the post-punk scorched-earth landscape four decades ago has reverberated and
resonated among all those who cherish the sweet-and-sour spot where rawness and
romanticism meet. “I’m aware of the fact that people cite us an influence”, says Richard,
“though I don’t often recognise it in their music. It’s gratifying of course, as it is that there’s
still an interested and enthusiastic audience for us. That’s an honour.”
As the Furs ’witty, poetic, pugnacious onslaughts seared out of punk then sashayed beyond
New Wave, launching a fleet of durable hits, they evolved electrically and elegiacally until
taking a studio hiatus from 1991. Yet since reconvening as an essential live act at the turn of
the century, they’ve found the applause growing louder and louder. People realised how
much they loved those songs from the 1980 debut The Psychedelic Furs, 1981’s Talk Talk
Talk, 1982’s Forever Now, 1984’s Mirror Moves, 1987’s Midnight To Midnight, 1989’s Book
Of Days and 1991’s World Outside, from early forays like Sister Europe and India through
Pretty In Pink and President Gas to radio staples Love My Way, Heaven, The Ghost In You
and Heartbreak Beat. And while The Furs lay latent (studio-wise), Butler remained busy,
releasing two Love Spit Love albums and a solo album, as well as painting exhibitions. Yet
the urge, the itch, came back and the skies opened to deliver Made Of Rain.
Given that the band were active touring, why hasn’t there been a new album for so long?
“It’s a fine balance”, muses Richard. “When you’ve been around for a while, people want to
hear certain songs at your shows. It was even like that back when we toured with the
second album…we’d do new ones like Pretty In Pink – y’know, pretty good songs – and
people just stood there not getting it, wanting to hear the “old” stuff! So at first that was
fine, as we didn’t do that much touring. It was exciting to play those songs again after taking
a break. But as we did more and more, eventually we started to feel like a jukebox. And you
want to be CREATIVE. And that won out. It got to this point where we felt we HAD to make anew record, we needed new songs to get into. And now I hear this album and I’m very
pleased we did…”
The six-piece line-up has gelled into a groove-some, guileful beast. With, of course, fellow
founder Tim Butler (Richard’s brother) on bass, it features Mars Williams on saxophone,
Rich Good on guitar, Paul Garisto on drums and Amanda Kramer on keyboards. “Oh it’s a
good thing”, nods Richard. “We’re all friends, we’re all family.
The album, released May 1
st on Cooking Vinyl, is produced by Richard Fortus (with The
Psychedelic Furs), a Love Spit Love alumnus who’s also played guitar with Guns ‘N Roses and
Thin Lizzy. “His band had opened for The Furs once and I liked his playing and his
personality. So when I wanted someone to write with after we first split up, I brought him to
New York. His input on the songwriting (for Love Spit Love) was huge. So that’s where I
knew him from. We kind of co-produced on this, in terms of ideas, but he was inspirational,
led the way”. Mixing duties were handled by Tim Palmer (David Bowie, U2, Robert Plant).
And while making the abundance of riches which form The Furs ’sound shine at its brightest
might be considered a challenge, “They’re all great players. Everyone found a place for
themselves, quite naturally”.
What crystallised the title Made Of Rain?
“There’s…a lot of sorrow and darkness in it. A while ago I read the book-length poem The
Man Made Of Rain by Brendan Kennelly. A person who was dying was visited by “a man
made of rain” and I liked that idea; it fit. For some reason, when writing, I always seem to
tend towards the melancholic. Or sometimes, also, anger. There have been very few
“celebratory” songs…I suppose perhaps Love My Way, possibly Heaven. But for the most
part it’s safe to say the songs are tinged with melancholy.”
And is it different writing in the modern world, much-changed since the last Furs songs?
“For me, not really, because most of my songs address an inner monologue. They’re not
“news-related”. I’ve never sat down and said, “I want to write a song about THIS subject.”
The music comes first, then I’ll come up with a melody, then that puts me in a certain frame
of mind. Then the words come from that place, that frame of mind. It’s not to do with
“world events”. It’s interior.”
In the way the impressionistic phrases spark off each other like juxtaposed images, there’s a
reminder that Butler’s an exhibited artist. “It’s painting a verbal picture of the feeling the
music brings out in me. But one of my favourite lines here comes on Wrong Train. “A wife
that hates me…so does her boyfriend”. It makes me laugh! Sure there’s a certain sorrow to it as
well, but…it’s dark comedy”.
Richard hears echoes of the first two albums in the existential pop song Don’t Believe, the
first single (released January 31st). “It’s very Psychedelic Furs-sounding”. You’ll Be Mineboasts a “very John Cale-sounding” Velvetsy violin. And as the album later slows the tempo,
arching the atmosphere across tracks like This’ll Never Be Like Love and Ash Wednesday, he
points out that the band have always teased out songs like that – he cites Sister Europe and
Imitation Of Christ as examples – as part of the mix. Discussing the spooky Come All Ye
Faithful, he acknowledges an unexpected influence in David Essex’s Seventies hit Lamplight.
“I’d always loved the creepy feeling of that song…hence the church bells…” Hide The
Medicine bears a subtle, sinister rumble of threat, of thunder approaching in the distance.
Talking of Pop Art (weren’t we?), Andy Warhol’s book From A To B And Back Again gets
name-checked in Tiny Hands. Delightfully, Richard has not one but two signed copies. One in
which Warhol, at young art student and Velvets fan Richard’s request, drew a banana at a
London book signing. And another from years later when Warhol invited the band to The
Factory in New York. “He was a wonderful host. Very sweet. After that he came down to a
couple of shows…”
The band’s peerless permutations of art, aggression and ambience drive the dynamics on
Made Of Rain, and it’s always been this originality which has set them apart, a cut above.
Back when they started, Punk Rock “helped us realise, all of a sudden, that you didn’t need a
lot of fancy equipment: attitude was important. But at the same time we were inspired by
Roxy Music, and I still loved Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground. It wasn’t JUST punk.”
Indeed the band, after initial outings as first RKO then The Europeans, chose their name as
wilful misfits. “We’d look at the list of gigs and for the most part names were…violent. The
Sex Pistols. The Stranglers. So I wanted something that made people go, “What the f*ck are
they doing?” And we knew “psychedelic” would do that…”
As they moved to America, where Richard now resides in upstate New York, some were
again disorientated, and the band’s later albums were perhaps perceived from a different
angle. “Some might have thought we were “traitors””, laughs the singer. “But after the
Forever Now tour, I had a girlfriend at the time who lived in New York, and I said to Tim,
“Fancy moving over here?” And we did. I guess that changed English people’s perceptions of
us. Maybe it’s reflected on Mirror Moves. We’d been lucky on the first two albums with
Steve Lillywhite producing – he absolutely didn’t want to dampen down our live sound. He
wanted it to sound like one of our gigs, which was everybody fighting for a place to be heard
on top of a racket! Then later, as we wanted a change, Todd Rundgren was a good choice
for Forever Now. I wanted to do something different, and I’d loved the chugging cellos in
Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring so we brought that into President Gas. And so then we were
in America…”
Yet in another time and any place, the beautiful chaos abides. In recent years the band have
played the Royal Festival Hall for the Meltdown Festival at Robert Smith of The Cure’s
request and everyone from The Killers to REM to Foo Fighters has sung their praises. Many
moons after Pretty In Pink (sort of) inspired that John Hughes movie, Love My Way has
featured in Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name and The Ghost In You in sci-fi smashStranger Things. Psychedelic Furs are sounding stronger than ever. As anyone who’s seen
the band lately knows, Butler remains one of the most watchable frontmen in the game:
pacing, crouching, theatrical, enigmatic but engaged. Tours are planned, and prestigious live
shows this year will include London’s Royal Albert Hall on May 14th
. Party time is here again.
“A lot of people tend to look back on their youth as being the most fantastic time, but it
really wasn’t: I think my life is just as good now, if not better. There’s a great deal of
pleasure to be had in knowing yourself rather than always second-guessing. Knowing your
strengths”.
As the closing track on Made Of Rain sighs, “these are the days that we will all remember”.
Does this feel like a special time again?
“Oh every minute you’re alive, they’re all great days.”
What a glorious feeling. Let it rain.

The third full-length from British rock band The Struts, Strange Days came to life over the course of a charmed and frenzied burst of creativity last spring. After getting tested for COVID-19, singer Luke Spiller, guitarist Adam Slack, bassist Jed Elliott, and drummer Gethin Davies all moved into the Los Angeles home of Jon Levine, a producer who worked extensively on their acclaimed sophomore effort YOUNG & DANGEROUS (including the album’s chart-climbing lead single “Body Talks”). Within just ten days of couch-crashing at Levine’s house, The Struts had laid down nine original tracks and one masterful cover of a KISS B-side: a lean, mean body of work that amounts to their most glorious output to date.

“It was so much fun to make a record this way instead of getting everything done in between touring, working with multiple producers in multiple countries,” says Spiller. “We were all just burning to capture that excitement as much as we possibly could, and at times it felt like the songs were literally just falling from the sky.”

In an organic turn of events for a band massively embraced by some of rock-and-roll history’s greatest icons—a feat that’s included opening for The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Guns N’ Roses—Strange Days finds The Struts joining forces with a formidable lineup of guest musicians: Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott and Phil Collen, Albert Hammond Jr. of The Strokes, Tom Morello, and Robbie Williams. Mixed by Claudius Mittendorfer (Panic! At the Disco, Arctic Monkeys, Johnny Marr), the result is a powerhouse album that lifts The Struts’ glammed-up breed of modern rock to entirely new and wildly thrilling heights.

Kicking off with a magnificent bang, Strange Days opens on its title track, a sprawling and string-laced duet with Robbie Williams. “I was doing Quarantine Radio and Robbie hit me up out of the blue asking if we could talk,” notes Spiller, referring to the Instagram Live show launched by The Struts in the early days of lockdown. “We ended up Face-Timing for about two hours the first time we’d ever spoken, talking about life and music and UFOs and everything else you can think of. I asked if he’d like to work together at some point, and while we were making the album he graciously let us come over and record him singing on his front porch.” Despite its prescient title, “Strange Days” took shape from a voice memo Spiller recorded on the band’s tour bus way back in summer 2019. Fused with a cabaret-inspired interlude Spiller had recently dreamed up, the song ultimately evolved into the perfect vessel for the frontman’s force-of-nature voice: a tenderhearted epic that offers incredible solace in the most chaotic of times.

Sparked from a Britpop-leaning riff brought in by Slack, the album’s potent lead single “Another Hit of Showmanship” feat. Albert Hammond Jr. centers on another poignant vocal performance from Spiller, who deftly channels the tension between giving in to temptation and rising above your demons. After laying down the initial version of the track, Spiller reached out to Hammond, for whom the band opened on a series of 2018 solo shows. “‘Another Hit of Showmanship’ reminds me of being at a club night called Ramshackle years ago at the O2 Academy in Bristol, where they’d play bands like The Libertines and Razorlight and Scissor Sisters, and of course The Strokes,” says Spiller. “I hit up Albert out of the blue and told him, ‘We’ve got this song, and I’m so excited to see what you would do with it.’ As soon as he got his hands on it, he took it to a whole different level—it really just shows why he’s so brilliant at what he does.”

The most groovy-heavy work yet from The Struts, Strange Days also delivers hip-shaking standouts like “I Hate How Much I Want You”: a hot-and-bothered stomper graced with a scorching guitar solo from Phil Collen and Joe Elliott’s high-voltage vocals. Another explosive moment, “All Dressed Up (With Nowhere To Go)” unfolds in snarling power chords and exquisitely cheeky lyrics (its opening salvo: “You look like a movie star/On Sunday morning”). “That one’s based around the idea of being in love with your motorcycle—there’s a bit of innuendo to it,” says Spiller, whose own bike inspired the track. “The whole concept of being all dressed up with nowhere to go seems especially relevant the moment.” Meanwhile, “Wild Child” makes for a fierce and filthy anthem, infinitely supercharged by Tom Morello’s blistering guitar work. And on the beautifully weary “Burn It Down,” The Struts slip into a bittersweet mood, serving up a slow-burning ballad that sounds straight from the sessions for Exile on Main St.

The sole cover song on Strange Days, “Do You Love Me” finds The Struts updating a fantastically sleazy track first recorded by KISS in 1976 and remade in 1980 by Girl (a late-’70s/early-’80s British glam-metal band that, incidentally, featured Phil Collen on guitar). “I was so in love with Girl’s version of ‘Do You Love Me’ and thought the simplicity of it was amazing,” says Spiller. “I wanted to give it an even bigger sound for our album—something way more aggressive, completely balls-to-the-wall.”

In their supreme handling of “Do You Love Me,” The Struts again claim their rightful place in the lineage of rock-and-roll hellraisers. Formed in Derby, England, in 2012, the band quickly drew a major following with their outrageous live show, and later made their debut with Have You Heard (a 2015 EP whose lead single “Could Have Been Me” hit #1 on Spotify’s viral chart). Before they’d even put out their first album, the band opened for The Rolling Stones before a crowd of 80,000 in Paris and toured the U.S. on a string of sold-out shows. With their full-length debut Everybody Wants arriving in 2016, The Struts released YOUNG & DANGEROUS in 2018, soon after wrapping up a North American tour with Foo Fighters. Having toured incessantly since their formation, The Struts have also taken the stage at many the world’s biggest music festivals, including Lollapalooza, Governors Ball, Isle of Wight, and many more.

As Spiller reveals, the making of Strange Days was a period of joyful productivity. “Every day I’d wake up at about 7 a.m., get three venti Americanos delivered to the house, go out to the backyard and smoke a couple of spliffs, and listen to the voice memos I’d recorded at the sessions the day before,” he recalls. “After the first four days or so we hit a bit of a wall, so we decided to get some beers in and just stay in the pool all day—and the day after that we knocked out three whole songs.” Throughout Strange Days, that kinetic energy manifests in the album’s unbridled spirit, an element that makes every track exhilarating. “I think because we’d wanted to make an album this way for years, all that excitement and hunger led to an immediate sort of magic once we started working on it,” says Spiller. “It was undoubtedly a magical ten days for us—and I hope when people hear the album, it gives them a taste of that magic too.”