David Wrench and Evangeline Ling – aka audiobooks – have revealed a bubbly tropical party single, ‘LaLaLa It’s the Good Life’, brilliant, effervescent and a little bit wild in the best possible way, its taken from their forthcoming LP, Astro Tough, due for release 1 October 2021 via Heavenly Recordings.
“When we had nearly finished the album, we figured that what it needed to complete it was some fun party music,” audiobooks say of the track. “So out came the box of percussion and a tropical tequila-drenched backing track was laid down. The chorus was based on overheard conversations on South London buses. We layered loads of tracks of us shouting and cheering to create a background party noise.”
https://youtu.be/45gseC_pFHs
audiobooks threw absolutely everything at their 2018 debut album, Now! (in a minute), a hectic, head-spinning blast of freewheeling freak-pop. On its follow-up, Astro Tough, due for release 1 October 2021 via Heavenly Recordings, they’ve somehow found a way to ramp things up even further, concentrating their chaotic energy and inherent weirdness into a record.
“The first album was a photograph of the beginnings of the project, recorded without any overall plan,” Wrench explains. “Astro Tough is more scripted, but a script that still allowed for lots of improvised scenes.”
Multi-instrumentalist and super-producer/mixer Wrench, known for his work with Frank Ocean, the xx, Caribou, David Byrne, Manic Street Preachers, and Goldfrapp, is as comfortable unleashing monolithic psychedelic wig-outs and heavy dub-driven monsters as he is crafting irresistible synth-pop bangers. Writer, vocalist and visual artist Ling is as chameleonic as she is charismatic, able to jump from detachment to rawness to aggression to tenderness to hilarity to toe-curling awkwardness, sometimes within the same song.
Above all else Astro Tough is a record that brims with energy. With their roles diverging more clearly than on their debut – Wrench handles almost all the music, Ling the lyrics and vocals – both dig deeper into the enormous emotional potential of each. “I definitely go to town with my feelings,” says Ling. “If I find I’m in a certain mindset, I’ll go as extreme as I can with it in my lyrics. I know I’m being over-dramatic.”
Live Dates
The Social, London – 12 August
Manchester Psych Festival – 04 September
The Goodlife Society, Hawarden Estate – 18 September
Marble Factory, Bristol – 02 November*
The Forum, London – 03 November*
O2 Ritz, Manchester – 4 November*
*supporting Baxter Dury
Photo credit: Rachel Lipsitz