Admiral Fallow are thrilled to announce the forthcoming release of their new album First Of The Birds on Chemikal Underground. The second single to be taken from the album, The Shortest Night, following on from first single Avalanche (released 19th June), is out now and available on all digitalplatforms.
The early sketches of First Of The Birds – their fifth full-length record, a rich and brooding affair – appeared in quiet mornings and spaces, before the songs burst into life with long-time collaborator and producer Paul Savage in Chem19 Studios. Approaching their twentieth year as a band, and having recently celebrated the 15th anniversary of their much-loved debut album, Admiral Fallow have never made a record in the way they have here, and the resulting work finds a way of both defining and redefining the scope of the group in 2025 and beyond.
On previous records, the band worked and re-worked demos in rehearsals before entering the studio, but here (by both design and circumstance), they had spent less time in one room together as a five-piece and retained an open-ended sense of where the songs would lead and the space they might take up. The rehearsals that did happen prior to recording took place in Louis Abbott’s attic room, where they practised hushed and unplugged. While a number of the songs would eventually find noisier paths of their own, the heart of the album remains in the understated spaces where it began – giving the songs an earthy and organic sense of wonder which feels wholly compelling.
“It comes from us having more confidence to just play together as a group,” Sarah Hayes says of the process behind the new album. “There’s a shorthand to how we work together, and how we experiment now, that has come from being together for so long. I don’t think we could have worked in this way at any other point in the past eighteen years.”
First single Avalanche is indicative of that journey, written by Louis following the birth of his daughter in 2022. “It tells the story of the day she joined us in the world,” he says of the new single. “I wrote the words very early one morning in Spring as she lay sleeping next to me on the couch.”
An elegant sonic undertaking, the track is defined by the rise and fall in temperature that swings back-and-forth throughout. Opening in gentle light, Abbott’s plaintive voice sings quiet details of his life as a new father, before the full band enters in a sudden, bold cascade.
That push-and-pull – of fiery passion and tender restraint – has been a key aspect of the band’s sound across their past work but is perhaps more fully-realised here. Second single, The Shortest Night, similarly and suitably follows this path, the personal nature of the words meeting the boisterousness of the instrumentation in a way that feels tight and intuitive. A direct and punchy four minutes, it was steered by a love for The Flaming Lips and Springsteen, and bursts and beats with a warm, sentimental heart.
It also leans into two key aspects of the album’s lyrical journey. Written in part during the strange, secluded days of 2020, First Of The Birds touches upon themes of new life in a reshaped world and also familial links to what was held before. “I’ve been taking some time trying to find out which bird that is singing there,” Louis sings on The Shortest Night, recalling his early morning walks through the park in a half-closed, forever-changed world. “I’m not sure we’ll ever recover from this,” he adds, plainly and to the point.
The time between 2021’s The Idea Of You LP and First Of The Birds has seen the arrival of Louis’ two children as well as a move away from where he’d been living. “Not all the songs are directly about those two things specifically, but they all speak to them in various ways,” Louis says. Touching upon themes of family and (dis)connection, the songs here are both lucid and opaque, often at the same time. The lyrics can feel direct, but held up to the light suddenly appear fragmented. Louis continues: “A lot of them came from whispered voice notes while out in parks, and were then shaped into new ideas. Others are asking questions in a fictional way, trying to fix long-standing, less-solid relationships in my life.”
No matter where the seeds of these songs lie, Admiral Fallow approach them with a real sense of fervour, leading to an expressive and resonant collection, both lyrically and in the breadth of its musical scope. Opening track First Names (Storms) melds gentle acoustic playing with unexpected flashes and flares of skewed production, a counterpoint to its book-end, All The Distractions, which rolls out like the soft sigh it sings of; a lullaby in all but name. Elsewhere, Headstrong is equally as forthright and bombastic as The Shortest Night, a short and sharp three minutes of spiky, colourful instrumentation and giddy vocals, while Daydreaming (Why Any Of This?) highlights the band’s collective prowess. A seven-minute epic, the song rips and rises before giving way to an arresting coda of subtle guitar lines, playful percussion and gorgeous two-part vocal harmonies; as captivating as the band have ever sounded.
Led by collective spirit and understanding, framing a time of significant change and upheaval, of the myriad ways those things shift the world around us, First Of The Birds feels something like a revelation. Admiral Fallow continue to evolve and transform, and in embracing such things, of folding their experiences into the fabric of the band, they’ve produced a record that is at once entirely personal while also feeling reassuringly universal. It thrives within those parameters; a burst of warm light on a new morning.
First Of The Birds finds Admiral Fallow’s line-up unchanged from their debut album: Louis Abbott (vocals, guitars, keyboards, programming, percussion), Kevin Brolly (keyboards, clarinet), Phil Hague (drums, percussion), Sarah Hayes (vocals, keyboards, flute) and Joe Rattray (bass, programming).
