Genres: Alt-rock / Acoustic / Punk

Availability: Available for shows (email), based in London.

Description: A mixture of a few of Albarn’s hooks, Tom Waits’ imagery, Feist’s intimacy, Gil Scott-Heron’s observation, Joe Strummer’s directness and Malkmus’ silliness, usually thrown away with Evan Dando’s insouciance….

Debut LP preview:

Press:

“Worth buying a turntable just to hear this.”
The Fly
“Intriguing melodies… highly alluring.”
Q Magazine.com
“Stream of conscious lyrics.. like a late night busker serenading the drunks… Get it for the indie kid in your life.”
Clash Music
“a strange, yet fantastic collaboration”
The 405

More Clips:

Photos (click for high-res):

Bio: ‘Punk rock troubadours’ are two-a-penny these days, but over the last decade, from founding a record label, running a radio station and busking across the US and Europe, Lonely Joe Parker might just have enough brownie points to justify it. Strange then, that the Clash-inspired songsmith’s luscious debut LP should end up pitched somewhere between Pavement, PJ Harvey and Mystery Jets. It’s a sweet spot.

Following the critical success of 2009’s What’s Wrong With Broken Glass Joe spent 2010 “Thinking about things. Hard.” For once, the explosive singer is understating things. In fact he oversaw a bumper year of acclaimed releases for Sotones Records (over 15, including his own Shanty release); somehow also fitting in time as hired-gun mercenary AIDS researcher.

This year Joe will release a series of EPs on Sotones. ‘Exile’s Sketches (Digital Remaster)‘ will document his early years through a collection of demos and rarities; ‘Ann The Arc‘ is a loud, dirty garage-rock side-project with former Thomas Tantrum rhythm section Dave Wade Brown and Jimmy Shivers; and ‘Neither Of Us Will Ever Be Evan‘ is a live collection of acoustic songs.

However, following wide travels though, including a German tour in 2010, he decided on a new direction: “It wasn’t that I didn’t like all the small bars, and the travelling, the small acoustic sound,” he explains, “But I really felt that all these people I met, these stories I was hearing, deserved something bigger.”

So in March 2011 he assembled a new 6-piece band and started to bring his songs (new and old) into colour. “We wanted to be free to jam; I really think that a song will find its own arrangement after a while, if you let it.” They found the seclusion they needed at Furnace Studios ‚Äì a purpose-built recording space in a Soviet-era building in rural Bulgaria.

The task of sorting through hours of recordings fell to producer James Ewers. After recording additional parts at Valley Studios, Winchester, final vocals were laid down at Abbey Road. Joe again: “It just completely liberating to record in a place like that.. weirdly I found being there, wilth all that music there past and present, gave me so much confidence… it was as if we felt we couldn’t help but make something incredible.”

Lonely Joe Parker is on tour across the UK and EU this summer. ‘The Tired And The Stunned‘ LP was mixed by Sam Miller (PJ Harvey, Biffy Clyro) and will be released in early February 2013 on Sotones.