A FEW weeks ago Backseat Mafia had the pleasure to catch up with Charley Keigher, wordsmith of the rejuvenated King of the Slums.
He revealed in the interview – which you can read in full, here – that they were due to “start mixing the new album in a few weeks; got two more albums written during lockdown. Just hope we can get it all recorded.”
And now the album, Encrypted Contemporary Narratives, has not only a release date – September 25th – but is available to pre-order.
Backseat Mafia has had the pleasure of a preview and KOTS fans will, of course, be gratified. Guitars fuzz; Clarissa’s violin draws bleak blood in off-kilter folk serenades for a land poisoned by retail parks and Universal Credit waiting times; Charley’s eye for the surreality of life, our new folk myths, is as sharp as ever.
There’s a more relaxed sounding Charley in the night(mare)-hours burlesque clubs of “Faux Faux La Bardot”, and a curse attributable to her cat – watch the video, below; the fraying of sanity out on the edge of the greenbelt, where “Julia went peculiar” in “Posh Town Witchcult”; the abrasively baggy lope of “Cockroach Infestation”; the eerie whispers and fiery incantation of “Snake Pass Luggage”.
Yeah; it’s looking like another cracker, fired in the stories and ovens of Manchester in this diseased summer of 2020. Watch out for our review in the coming weeks.
Encrypted Contemporary Narratives is available to pre-order now at the King of the Slums’ website, here. It’ll be released across the usual streaming platforms and on CD on September 25th.
