Johnny Marr has announced his upcoming double album release, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4. Marking his fourth solo full-length record, the 16-track double LP will be released on February 25th, 2022 via BMG.
Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 is the first full album of all-new Johnny Marr music since 2018’s acclaimed Call The Comet. The first taste of the album came from the electro-soul opening track “Spirit, Power and Soul” released last month and can can be heard below All 16 songs make up a fantastically expansive work with a deliberate beginning and end.
About the album, Johnny says, “There’s a set of influences and a very broad sound that I’ve been developing – really since getting out of The Smiths until now, and I hear it in this record. There are so many strands of music in it. We didn’t do that consciously, but I think I’ve got a vocabulary of sound. And I feel very satisfied that I’ve been able to harness it.”
Fever Dreams Pts. 1-4 explores a multitude of concepts and themes. Because the wider world effectively shut down during its creation, Marr’s focus was pushed into both his interior life, and evoking the emotional and psychological states of others. “It’s an inspired record, and I couldn’t wait to get in and record every day,” he says. “But I had to go inwards.”
As well as evoking the past and present, the album looks to the future, the idea that even in the most trying times, hope endures. Songs like “Hideaway Girl”, “Lightning People” and “Tenement Time” are anthemic, rousing creations. Songs “The Speed Of Love” and “Rubicon” offer introspective, exploratory pieces that take advantage of the project’s emphasis on space. Running through the album are two key elements: echoes of the wildly diverse music from across Marr’s career, and lyrics that are direct, emotional, deeply human, and thereby true to what Marr calls “The Language Of The Song.”
Written and recorded at the Crazy Face Factory over the last year, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 was created with Marr’s long-standing band: co-producer Doviak, bassist Iwan Gronow, drummer Jack Mitchell, and features backing vocals throughout the album from the Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Meredith Sheldon, with three songs featuring bass from Primal Scream’s Simone Marie.
