Listen To Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ New Single, ‘Dead To The World’
Noel Gallagher‘s High Flying Birds summon the power of recording strings at the legendary Abbey Road Studios on Dead To The World, the third pre-release track from their upcoming album, Council Skies. Gallagher teased the sessions earlier this year on social media without revealing their purpose. You can listen to the track below.
With arrangements from previous collaborator Rosie Danvers, Dead To The World is “by some distance my favourite tune on the album,” according to Gallagher. “It has this film noir vibe. It’s not like anything else I’ve ever done before. It’s very melancholic, but I like that. I’m a Gemini – I’m as up as I am down, and the trick is to meet somewhere in the middle and turn that into music.”
As for the talents of Danvers, Gallagher opines, “Rosie gets what I do. Spending a weekend recording strings in Abbey Road … that’s one of the great privileges in a musician’s life. It sounds majestic.”
Council Skies will be released on June 2 on Sour Mash Records, and some versions of it will include a remix of the previous single Pretty Boy by The Cure’s Robert Smith.
From the evocative album title to the cover art, to the lyrics themselves, Council Skies sees Noel Gallagher reclaiming his past and paying homage to his Mancunian roots. His most varied and accomplished solo record to date, Noel’s fourth solo studio album is a record framed by confidence, risk-taking, surefooted creative freedom, and great emotional depth.
Speaking of the album, Noel says: “It’s going back to the beginning. Daydreaming, looking up at the sky and wondering about what life could be … that’s as true to me now as it was in the early ‘90s. When I was growing up in poverty and unemployment, music took me out of that,” he says. “Top of the Pops on TV transformed your Thursday night into this fantasy world, and that’s what I think music should be. I want my music to be elevating and transforming in some way.”
On the day of the album’s release, Gallagher will begin a summer North American tour with Garbage and Metric in Auburn, WA. Dates run through July 15 in Boston and comprise Gallagher’s first shows across the Atlantic since 2019.
Pre-order Council Skies here.