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.
With arrangements from previous collaborator Rosie Danvers, “Dead to the World” is “by some distance my favorite 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.
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.
