Photo Credit: Polocho
Liverpool’s indie powerhouse Circa Waves have unveiled their brand new single ‘Old Balloons’ – an homage to touring, reflecting on life left back at home. It’s taken from the second chapter of their brand new album Death & Love Pt.2 – out October 24th via Lower Third/[PIAS] – with both parts making the whole 18 track album available to pre-order on CD and double gatefold vinyl.
As frontman Kieran Shudall describes; “Old Balloons’ is about being homesick on our first US tours. It’s the strange feeling of leaving home with the hope of “making it in America’, but knowing that if you do you will be home even less.” Listen here.
The band returned recently with the bubbling, laid-back Strokes slacker indie of lead singer ‘Cherry Bomb’,
Released in January 2025, Death & Love Pt.1 was all about starting from scratch and starting over after his lowest point with his brush with mortality. In early 2023, Kieran received a call from doctors to say that the main artery in his heart was severely blocked. Two days later, he was lying on an operating table watching a wire being inserted into his heart to fix it. What followed was the cancelling of a lot of shows, working out a lot of medication, and most crucially, now having to navigate a new way of life.
However, one record wasn’t enough to house all that would come flooding from such a profound experience. “I’d written so much stuff after all the heart incident stuff – there was a release of creativity,” Shudall admits. “There were more songs than I’d ever written before, in one furious writing period.”
The two albums were produced by Shudall and recorded between a friend’s studio in Finsbury Park and the iconic RAK studios in London, where Green Day and Muse happened to be working at the time (“I saw Billie Joe Armstrong in the toilet!” Kieran excitedly proclaims). The sister records come together to boast the sound of bouncing back from potential tragedy.
Now, after ‘part one’ tried to make sense of what he’d been through, “this album feels like the more optimistic part of the two records,” says Shudall. “It almost feels like if the first record was before the operation and death and fear of dying, then one is coming through the other side. It’s about love, life, survival and euphoria”.
Circa Waves was formed in Liverpool in May 2013. The band first gained a buzz and earned favourable comparisons to the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, and the Vaccines before they hit the Top Ten with their debut, 2015’s Young Chasers. Buoyed by singles like ‘T-Shirt Weather’ and ‘Stuck in My Teeth’, the album reached the Top Ten of the U.K. albums chart and paved the way for a series of well-attended live shows, including a sold-out date at London’s O2 . In 2020, they reached number four on the U.K. albums chart with Sad Happy and returned in 2023 with Never Going Under.
Circa Waves will return to the road to play a special show at Assembly Hall, Worthing on Friday, October 24th, raising money for crucial NHS services. Tickets available HERE.
Life is for living – and living well – and Circa Waves are here to soundtrack that. There’s no time for pretence; but enough long nights to get lost in, another dance to be danced, and parties to be had with the people that matter the most. There’s always more love to be made. FOLLOW CIRCA WAVES
Instagram / TikTok / YouTube / Spotify / Facebook / X
