Premiere: Sam Roberts Band's 'Shapeshifters'
- %27Lo-Fantasy%2C%27 the group%27s first album in three years%2C will be released Feb. 11
- %27Shapeshifters%27 was the first song written for the album
- %27Lo-Fantasy%27 was produced by Youth%2C aka Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover
Shapeshifters doesn't have to be just the lead track from the Sam Roberts Band's forthcoming album. It could also describe the way the band approached that album, Lo-Fantasy, due Feb. 11.
The Clash-inspired dance-rock number, premiering at USA TODAY, expands the group's sonic palette, as does much of the new album, which frontman Sam Roberts calls "fundamentally different" from any of the five-piece Canadian group's previous work.
As the first track written for Lo-Fantasy, frontman Sam Roberts says in a release, "that song is a gateway to a lot of what happens on the rest of the record. ... I felt that with a song like this under my belt, I wasn't going to be pigeonholed into making any one specific kind of record."
The group recorded Lo-Fantasy with producer Youth, aka Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover, whose other production credits include The Verve and Crowded House. The sessions took just 12 days at Glover's Montreal studio.
"We worked insanely long hours, and after three days of that you're almost in a hallucinogenic state," Roberts says. "Youth would be in the control room with his Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, dancing and doing oil painting interpretations of the songs while we were recording, and we're thinking, 'My God, we've got a madman at the helm!'"
The Sam Roberts Band plans to tour the U.S. in early 2014, starting with an album-release show at the Mercury Lounge in New York City.
Here's the track listing for Lo-Fantasy:
- Shapeshifters
- We're All In This Together
- Human Heat
- Metal Skin
- Angola
- The Hands of Love
- Kid Icarus
- Too Far
- Never Enough
- Chasing The Light
- Golden Hour