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News: Gerard Way to release debut solo album next month

2 min read

(AUS) Former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way will release his debut solo album Hesitant Alien on September 26th via Warner Bros. Records.  The first track from the new album Action Cat has already been doing the rounds with another No Shows expected mid-August.

Working with producer Doug McKean and mixed by Tchad Blake (Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys), Way immediately determined the sound direction of his first solo release.

“I wanted to make the small things sound big,” he said. “My intention was to make 100 percent uncompromised art, using the currently least radio-friendly instrument, the guitar. I knew there would be lots of fuzz pedals. I knew I would play Fender instruments. I knew I would look at who my guitar heroes were in art school, Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein, and I drew a lot of influence from shoe-gaze and Britpop. I want the record to sonically galvanize people.”

Lyrically, Way wrote about what he knew at the time, “which was struggle, beginnings, finding a newness in the mundane and the abstract,” he says. “I looked to the Britpop poets like Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn, drawing upon everyday life. I also experimented with the abstract, and looked at Frank Black’s work both with the Pixies, and as a solo artist. There was no concept and no call-to-arms.”

Way performs his first solo shows at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in England on August 22nd and 23rd.

Tracklisting:

  1. Bureau
  2. Action Cat
  3. No Shows
  4. Casting Shadows
  5. Millions
  6. Zero Zero
  7. Juarez
  8. Drugstore Perfume
  9. Get The Gang Together
  10. How’s It Going To Be
  11. Maya The Psychic

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