Blue Murder and Select Touring are excited to announce the return of singer/songwriter Frank Turner this November.
Since his last visit in 2015, Turner has criss-crossed the globe, transforming from another aging punk with an acoustic guitar to a galvanizing voice in the wilderness for his thousands of fans, many of whom are aging punks themselves. His shows have moved from corner pubs to concert halls, his singles have moved from the blogosphere to the British charts, and his lyrics have moved from the page to many a tattooed bicep. The music has also graduated to a grander scale.
His forthcoming seventh studio album, Be More Kind (released on May 4th through Xtra Mile Recordings/Polydor Records), represents a thematic and sonic line in the sand for the 36-year-old. It’s a record that combines universal anthems with raw emotion and the political and the personal, with the intricate folk and punk roar trademarks of Turner’s sound imbued with new, bold experimental shades. Produced by Austin Jenkins and Joshua Block, formerly of psychedelic-rock Texans White Denim, and Florence And The Machine and Halsey collaborator Charlie Hugall. “I wanted to try and get out of my comfort zone and do something different,” says Turner.
Turner and his band, the Sleeping Souls, were on tour in the USA in 2016 “when the world decided to go collectively nuts” and the songs that make up Be More Kind started to come together. “Somewhere in the record, there’s a convergence of the ideas of personal and political, which is a central theme of the album,” Turner says. One of the driving themes of the album is empathy, even for your enemy. “You should at least be able to inhabit the mental universe of the people you disagree with. If you can’t do that, then how do you communicate with people other than through force of arms, which is something we all agree is a bad idea.” Behind some of the best songs of Turner’s career is the idea that the human race needs to find better ways of disagreeing than screaming each other down.
FRANK TURNER - BE MORE KIND WORLD TOUR
Thu 29th Nov San Fran Wellington (tickets from UTR, Slow Boat + RPM)
Fri 30th Nov Tuning Fork Auckland (tickets from Ticketmaster)
