Alberta Cross Announce New Album 'Sinking Ships'

The London-based rock band Alberta Cross announced their new album Sinking Ships will be released on March 31 via Dark Matter / AMK distributed via Kartel Music Group. The band also released a new single "Glow In The Dark" following the release of "Mercy" in November. Sinking Ships is now available for pre-order.

"Glow In The Dark" is central to the album's overall theme of mental health. About the song, Swedish-born lead singer and guitarist Petter Ericson Stakee explains: "The 'Circling' chorus, when it finally drops, serves as a release to the darkness of the rest of the track - something or someone that serves as a way through life's difficulties - a coping mechanism, good or bad. A way back out of our own battles that we often fight silently."

Sinking Ships was written mostly at the legendary The Wool Hall in Frome, Somerset with Petter's long term producer and collaborator Luke Potashnick, who recently bought and renovated the legendary studio.

On the making of "Glow In The Dark" Potashnick adds: "One of the main parts of the song came from Petter singing this high soaring melody at the top of one his vocal takes - before long, we re-enforced it with a cutting guitar and MS20 synth. Drums again were played by Tom the Lion - his parts weaving and repeating between the sections. And Petter played my old Yacht Piano - which I found fitting considering the 'lost at sea' lyric."

The visuals to accompany the new album project are equally poignant - the video which will drop in a couple of weeks is once again directed by Luis Velasco and shot on Super 8 cameras. Christopher Gee's (British artist from Portsmouth, who lives and works on The Thames Estuary, Essex) paintings will be used throughout the campaign, including for the album artwork.

The album, which will be Alberta Cross' seventh, has definitely taken longer than was first expected, Petter comments, "After everything the world has seen these past two years, the album took longer than we expected to record and release...the writing side of it actually came together quite quickly. But now that it is finally coming out, the timing actually feels serendipitous - the themes and lyrics of these songs do in fact reflect what's going on in the world today. Even though I wrote some of these tunes a while ago they strangely feel more relevant today than they did back then".

Luke adds, "I adore the feeling of this record - when writing together, Petter and I always end up somewhere on the same page - maybe it's the Scandinavian in us, maybe it's the life-stage we both share. I am particularly fond of 'Mercy' and 'Sinking Ships'. A lot of the landscape of these songs were set up back in a basement in Sweden... the main reason I single out these two songs is in how Petter's voice soars on these recordings. I feel they are truly unique to Petter's way of singing and I'm always very excited when we manage to capture that."

He continues, "The cover of Sharon Van Etten's song is also a really special moment on the record for me. I never know how I truly feel about covers on a record of otherwise original songs... But this song is just so good and again I'm really proud of this version".

Since forming in 2005 - Alberta Cross have toured with Mumford & Sons, Portugal. The Man, Neil Young, Them Crooked Vultures (David Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones) and Rag N' Bone Man to name a few, performed on TV around the world including The Late Show with David Letterman and Last Call with Carson Daly, had tracks featured in multiple US hit TV series (Million Little Pieces, Sons of Anarchy, Californication) and released six previous albums. Now back in the UK, Petter will be promoting the new album in the UK and across Europe throughout 2023, with US dates to come.

Credit: Courtney Sultan

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