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The Moon Also Rises

Johnny Flynn returns to Exeter Phoenix, this time with his friend & collaborator, Robert Macfarlane as they announce their new album: The Moon Also Rises.

Their music fuses poetry, story, landscape, history, nature and myth into a series of rich, strange songlines that criss-cross time and place, joining winter to spring, ancient to present and birth to death. As the Sun sets, so the Moon rises as its echo; as one light dies, another, altogether different light is born.

The Moon Also Rises – Johnny Flynn’s sixth album, and the second co-written with his friend Robert Macfarlane – will be released on 10 November 2023.

Johnny Flynn is a singer, composer, musician and actor. His musical releases to date include the studio albums A Larum (2008), Been Listening (2010), Country Mile (2013), Sillion (2017) and Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021). He has released two full live albums, Live in Washington DC (2014) and Live at the Roundhouse (2018) and various EPs and soundtracks. As well as touring the world with his band, Johnny regularly composes music for film, TV and theatre –– including work for period instruments at the Globe Theatre. Johnny’s recent acting projects include Hangmen and True West (for which he also composed the music) on stage and Emma, Beast and The Dig on film. He is currently appearing as Richard Burton in Jack Thorne’s sell-out play The Motive and the Cue, directed by Sam Mendes.

Robert Macfarlane is a writer of books about nature, people, place and landscape including Underland (2019), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and, with Jackie Morris, The Lost Words (2017) and The Lost Spells (2020). He also writes films (inc. Mountain and River, both starring Willem Dafoe), operas, plays and screenplays, and collaborates widely, including with artist Stanley Donwood, and musicians Cosmo Sheldrake, Jocelyn Pook and Karine Polwart. His work has been widely adapted for film, stage, television, radio, dance, music and performance, and his books have been published in more than thirty languages. In 2023 he was awarded the inaugural Weston International Award for Non-Fiction.

The Moon Also Rises gathers songs that Johnny and Robert have written together since finishing their first joint album, Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021). At its heart are the oldest themes of all: death and renewal, darkness and light. The first five tracks are songs of burial, shadows and memory, while the final four are songs of awakening, light and love. The album turns around a central song, ‘The Sun Also Rises’, which stands with a foot in both dark and light.

This is an album that’s been walked into being. Tracks have shaped tracks: many of the songs here began life or took form while Johnny and Robert followed paths together, including those that run over the wooded South Downs, and those following the banks of the River Lea, the grimy river which flows south from near Robert’s home in Cambridge to near Johnny’s home in east London.

The result is an album which fuses poetry, story, landscape, history, nature and myth into a series of rich, strange songlines that criss-cross time and place, joining winter to spring, ancient to present and birth to death. As the Sun sets, so the Moon rises as its echo; as one light dies, another, altogether different light is born.

The first single (released on 12 September), is called ‘Uncanny Valley’. It was written fast, in only a couple of days, and it’s a song for our times of wildfires and extreme weather, AI and pandemics; a song for an era that’s eerie and out-of-kilter, when we all feel lost in the uncanny valley.

A further track will be available as a preview of the album, ‘No Matter the Weight’ (on 10 October). Johnny and Rob recall writing the song: “In an ancient story that means a lot to us, there’s a moment where two friends stop on the brink of a forest, unsure about whether to proceed. One of them speaks reassuringly to the other, and says that they should go on together, like two reed-boats bound to one another for buoyancy, no matter the weight, no matter the weather. And so they do.”

The second single, ‘Song with no Name’, is inspired by the poet Edward Thomas (1878–1917), whose work both Johnny and Robert love. It’s a song of the path; both an elegy for the ghosts we all walk beside, and an embrace of those whose company keeps us going in the living world.

The third single, ‘Burial Blessing’, is a bittersweet song of loss and leaving. The 7” vinyl accompanying the LP Dinked Edition includes a version of this song recorded inside a 5500-year-old chambered tomb in Gloucestershire.

The Moon Also Rises is a hugely varied, surprising and moving album. It was partly recorded in an old Methodist chapel –– now the home of Johnny and Rob’s friends, Cosmo and Flora Sheldrake.

“We brought together a large band of friends. It felt like we were celebrating being together as much as making music. That spirit of artistic community and collaboration, of sharing and learning and growing, is at the heart of all the work we make together.”

The album is produced by Charlie Andrew (alt-J, Marika Hackman), who also produced Lost in The Cedar Wood.

VENUE: EXETER PHOENIX, AUDITORIUM

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