FIFTEEN years after they split, Isle of Lewis indie rockers Astrid are back with a new album.
Named Fall, Stand, Dance, the record again teams the band with producer Edwyn Collins, who manned the controls for Astrid’s 1999 Strange Weather Lately.
A critical and modest commercial success, that record’s update on 60s pop made them radio fav-ourites and teenage darlings of the late 1990s indie scene; a Belle and Sebastian from the Hebdrides with more feedback and youthful fuzz.
Released on Collins’s AED Records, Fall, Stand, Dance is the work of the band’s principal songwriters Willie Campbell and Charlie Clark, who has lived for the past decade in Los Angeles where he’s the booker for music venue Harvard and Stone.
In 2015 Clark returned to visit his family in Stornoway. Campbell had just finished a record in his solo guise of Open Day Rotation. Meeting up, the old friends knew they wanted to make music with each other again.
Even more so than Strange Weather Lately, Fall, Stand, Dance contrasts Campbell’s warmer melodies with Clark’s rockier songs. It’s immediate and largely joyful, Astrid’s trademark harmonies front and centre of a record Clark says is Strange Weather Lately’s proper successor.
“It’s safe to say we’re not keen on our second album and by the time we did the third we’d all been on tour with The Reindeer Section for three years,” says Clark, referring to the early 2000s supergroup.
Working again with Collins and his wife Grace Maxwell brought Clark and Campbell back to being 18-year-olds raring to release their first EP.
“Edwyn and Grace have always remained around in some way,” says Clark.
“They were so good to Astrid. We had a lot interest with labels for this new record but when Grace said they would like to put it out it was no-brainer.”
Astrid hope to tour later in the year in response to the positive reception the album is beginning to attract.
“We’ve been so surprised at the response,” Clark says. “Back in Stornoway we’ve had nothing more than love, support and encourage-ment. We’re going to tour this record and hopefully by the end of it get the chance to make another.”
Poison Reation is out now via AED Records. Fall, Stand, Dance follows on April 12
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