The Natvral is Kip Berman, former frontman of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
His second solo album comprises nine crisp, uptempo commercial songs that owe much to Petty, Springsteen and electric Dylan.
The album title is not a Covid reference but is taken from the climate crisis of 1816 when a volcanic eruption in Indonesia darkened much of the world’s sky. Needless to say the present climate crisis was on Berman’s mind too.
The nine tunes were recorded mostly live in one week with Berman’s long-time collaborator Andy Savours (Black Country New Road, My Bloody Valentine, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart) in London.
|
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written in the summer of 1816 while holed up in Switzerland on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. “I found the idea of these people sustaining themselves through art, while fucking and getting fucked up, both familiar and foreign”, says Berman.
However, it was the routines of a less decadent domesticity with his wife and two kids that formed the backdrop to this record.
These are mainly love songs not ghost stories.
|
