Lau returned with their new album, Midnight and Closedown last week, and the chaps are taking it on the road, with a stop-off in Milton Keynes.
Already acknowledged as thrilling live performers and folk music pioneers, Lau arrive at a new creative peak with Midnight and Closedown.
The band’s 12-year recording career is resplendent with unexpected collaborations, accolades and innovative ideas. The sound of Lau in 2019 is perhaps closer to late period Beatles than to the traditional tunes and ballads of their 2007 debut Lightweights and Gentlemen. And yet the new album’s closing track ‘Riad’ marks a full circle, stripping the lineup back to bare acoustic instruments.
Midnight and Closedown is Lau’s first new music since 2015’s The Bell That Never Rang. The disc was produced John Parish, widely celebrated for his recordings and collaborations with P.J Harvey, Eels, Sparklehorse and many more, and he has captured the essence of Lau’s songwriting: tender, bewitching and mournful, uplifting, experimental and political.
These are new sounds still rooted in the traditional music that brought together the UK’s three finest folk artists.
‘Lau. Cool band. Don't sound like anybody else. I could describe the instrumentation : treated fiddle, guitar and rich baritone voice, an electronic ship in a bottle. A beautiful set of songs and instrumentals. In touch with their roots but not bound by them,' says Parish.
Lau have pushed at the boundaries of modern folk music with each successive release, curation and concert tour.
And now comes this bold, progressive new statement. Reading between the lines here – the enigmatic album title, the quotes from the band members below – could suggest that the new album is Lau’s swansong. But Midnight and Closedown, Lau’s finest artistic statement to date, could equally prove to be the opening of a brave new chapter.
"'Every time Lau return to the studio we are a different little unit, " says Martin Green, "Musically a three-piece band is wonderful thing. A triangle is a powerful shape, you can tilt it and turn it and any way up, whichever is its highest point will always be supported and grounded by two points beneath. And Lau have made much use of this power of three over the years.
"But three is small, and that can be insular. So we always take a fourth and in recent years a fourth we don't know know very well (except though their music). And this is tremendously exciting.
This time the fourth person was the legendary John Parish.
"Our job as we see it, is to pass over to the John the music as we have been playing it, and his is to mould and shape it as his ear guides him. And his ear is special. He has made a Lau album that only he could make, and, just for the record, he's an absolute gent."
Lau will play The Stables in Milton Keynes on February 24.
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