Liverpool’s indie powerhouses Circa Waves are back with their spectacular new album Death & Love Pt.1 - out January 31st, 2025 via Lower Third/PIAS. First track, the supreme ‘We Made It’ is available today.
Circa Waves will return to the road in February & March next year, embarking on their biggest UK headline tour yet, playing to their ever expanding fanbase. Across 12 dates, they’ll play to thousands of fans across the UK, including a night at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on March 26th & a what will be a truly special final night hometown show at Liverpool’s Olympia March 1st.
Both terrifying and liberating to write, Death & Love Pt.1 is an urgent, 9-track hit of cathartic guitar-pop, serving as a powerful coping mechanism to help process frontman Kieran Shudall’s near-death experience.
Back in early 2023, Kieran received a call from doctors to say that the main artery in his heart was severely blocked. Two days later, he was lying on an operating table watching a wire being inserted into his heart to fix it. What followed was the cancelling of a lot of shows, working out a lot of medication, and most crucially, now having to navigate a new way of life.
“I needed this record to process what I went through. A letter to tell myself I would stick around,” Kieran explains. “Most of all, I wanted to make a record for me, with music I love and hopefully music to make kids in their bedroom pick up a guitar and believe they can take on the fucking world.”
And the results are quite simply stunning. Self-produced by Kieran, and engineered by Matt Wiggins (Adele, Lana Del Rey, Glass Animals), the nine tracks that make up Death & Love Pt.1 ooze nostalgia, and hark back to the sounds and themes that made Shudall want to pick up a guitar in the very first place.
Tracks like the exploding album opener ‘American Dream’ lay the record’s hopeful foundations, with ‘Le Bateau’ - named after a Liverpool club - recalls euphoric, youthful nights out, and the laid back ‘Hold It Steady’ & ‘Blue Damselfly’ showcasing the album’s more emotional themes. ‘We Made It’ oozes with Shudall’s hope and optimism, and ‘Let’s Leave Together’ is a future hit-in-waiting, joining ‘Like You Did You Before’ in two stand out tracks that have infectious hooks, huge choruses running through their hearts and are set to blow the roof off venues on next year’s tour.
Circa Waves was formed in Liverpool in May 2013 by Kieran Shudall. After writing a batch of songs and putting some demos online, he recruited second guitarist Joe Falconer, bassist Sam Rourke, and drummer Sian Plummer (replaced by Colin Jones in 2015).
The band first gained a buzz and earned favourable comparisons to the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, and the Vaccines before they hit the Top Ten with their debut, 2015’s Young Chasers on Virgin/EMI. Buoyed by singles like ‘T-Shirt Weather’ and ‘Stuck in My Teeth’, the album reached the Top Ten of the U.K. albums chart and paved the way for a series of well-attended live shows, including a sold-out date at London’s O2 .
Without shying away from their influences, the band matured, and albums like 2017’s Different Creatures, 2019’s What’s It Like Over There? showcase their knack for crafting their own distinctively infectious, post-punk anthems. In 2020, they reached number four on the U.K. albums chart with Sad Happy and returned in 2023 with Never Going Under.
Death & Love Pt.1 is the first instalment of a snapshot in time - a reflection on a moment of true terror, and the joy of coming through the other side. It’s a brave and remarkable next step for a band in the finest form of their career.
February 2025
14th Birmingham, O2 Academy
15th Nottingham, Rock City
16th Glasgow, Barrowland Ballroom
18th Cambridge, Junction
19th Norwich, UEA
21st Newcastle, NX
22nd Manchester, O2 Victoria Warehouse
23rd Bristol, Beacon
25th Leeds, O2 Academy
26th London, 02 Academy Brixton
27th Southampton, The 1865
March
1st Liverpool, Olympia
Death & Love Pt. 1 - Track Listing
1. American Dream
2. Like You Did Before
3. We Made It
4. Le Bateau
5. Hold It Steady
6. Let;s Leave Together
7. Blue Damselfly
8. Everything Changed
9. Bad Guys Always Win
