The new post on Heather Findlay’s website, mostly about the recently finished tour, also includes this very welcome announcement:
For the very many of you that made it to a show on this tour, you will know just how much the new Heather Findlay Band line up cooked! It is such a high energy, intensely soulful collective with such groove that I’ve never really experienced before. The whole thing has lifted to a completely new dimension and I am so excited to announce that we will be taking to the rehearsal studios come January to work on a brand new HFB album!!!
This is very good news. The last couple of acoustic releases have been great records, and have kept her name in the public eye, but a record containing brand new material is precisely the thing she really needs to take her solo career on to the next level. At the moment it’s only those of us who have seen her live who really know what she can do with a full electric lineup outside the context of her former band.
The implication here is that they’re going to write and record together as a band, which I certainly feel is the right approach to take at this stage. The challenge will be to come up with something that matches the energy and intensity of those live performances. It will be very interesting to see what sort of material they come up with, but the quality of the one new song “Shine” played on the tour is a very positive sign.
No word about release dates as yet, which is probably wise. There are some live dates planned for April next year, and I can imagine new songs being road-tested at those shows before being recorded. But that’s pure speculation. We shall have to wait and see.
