Tropical Strength today announce the release of their second album ‘Tropical Strength & The Silverbeats’ and deliver another preview with the single ‘Turnstiles’, available to stream everywhere right now.

Al Foil outlines how the track came about: “ Turnstiles appeared when I tried to figure out a Wilco song and got it wrong. The mistake I made caught my ear and a torrent of memories flooded out, some of which were at odds with each other. Lyrically I was playing with fragments of childhood nostalgia and clashing them with adolescent realisations . I was contemplating the unattainable sublime, things that have been and the things that could be, that may never be realised outside of my interior world”

The album, to be released on on May 10th, builds on the experimental psych pop sounds of the bands debut Zutti, but has a much more live feel, with it being recorded as a band in the infamous “cube studio” at the base of the escarpment in Austinmer. Al says of the process that “Jay Bird, our bass player at the time, built this studio literally underneath his house and we recorded the album live to tape over a number of sessions. Those involved in the sessions were myself, Russ, Jay, Luke and Paul, which is a slightly different lineup to our current band (welcome Suzie, Damien Lane and Molly Laska) We also had help from Jaime, who played trumpet for Cup of Tea, and Slats ( Michael Slater) my bandmate in Shining Bird who played saxophone on Judy. Along with Analogue king Owen Penglis who recorded most of the vocals in his Kings Cross studio.

The album was recorded by Jay on an 8-track reel to reel, and then mixed by the Webster Brothers at their home studio. This process gives the album a more immediate and spontaneous feel than the debut. “A lot of the songs were dreamed up while re visiting childhood memories. It’s a concept album that I gave up halfway through and then started trying again towards the end- A bit like my day to day existence. I found myself lost in whimsical fairy tales, the beauty of the mundane, depression and the political fault line.” describes Al.

Tropical Strength and The Silverbeats is out on May 10th via Farmer & The Owl/Silhouette Records.