Matthews Southern Comfort, who famously scored a worldwide hit with their cover of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock in 1970, are back with a new line-up, single and album.
The album, Like A Radio, will be released on February 23, and is the follow-up to 2010’s Kind Of New.
“The original Matthews Southern Comfort was a vehicle for my musical concepts and forty years on the ideas and songs are still coming,” says frontman Ian Matthews, who released the first Matthews Southern Comfort album in 1969 after leaving Fairport Convention. “With this new line-up, Like A Radio continues that ongoing journey.”
The new line-up is completed by Dutch musicians Bart Jan Baartmans, Bart de Win and Eric De Vries. The band have also released a video for Bits And Pieces, the first track to emerge from the new sessions.
“Bits And Pieces is a song about being transient, or displaced,” says Matthews.
“I have several compositions in my catalogue that have morphed from being something else into their final identity. This is an example. It began life more than fifteen years ago as a song called A Fool For You. Andy Roberts and I recorded it for a six-track Plainsong EP called A To B.
“I could never quite get behind that version of the song and consequently never bothered playing it again. I always had the feeling it was unfinished.
“During preparations for the new Matthews Southern Comfort album I rediscovered the tune and worked on the lyrics extensively. When I first recorded it I’d only just moved to my new home in the Netherlands. Now I had some perspective on it.
“The sentiment of the song is about being in any particular place and trying to fit in, knowing you never will. Always sensing that no matter how well you think you blend in, you’ll always be that songwriter guy that married a local girl and stayed.”
Like A Radio is available to pre-order now.
- Gerry Rafferty: The Man Who Hated the Music Business
- Steve Hackett announces orchestral Genesis Revisited UK tour
- Our TeamRock+ offer just got bigger. And louder.
- Deranged Marillion fan builds the Chrome extension no one wants
Like A Radio tracklist
The Thought Police
Like A Radio
The Age Of Isolation
Bits And Pieces
Darcy Farrow
Crystals On The Glass
Been Down So Long
Jive Pajamas
Phoenix Rising
To Love
Right As Rain
Chasing Rainbows
Something In The Way She Moves
A Heartless Night
Your Cake And Eat It
The tale of David Peel, the dope-smoking hippy who became the King of Punk
