London based alternative singer/songwriter Daniel Gadd announces new album and shares new single 'A Scene From Some Old Poem'

Listen / share: https://youtu.be/39DZ__9ZBJQ

“a similar impact on me as Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago: a songwriter isolated among the elements with his memories who emerges with a mesmerising collection of songs.” MOJO 

South African-born and London-based alternative singer/songwriter Daniel Gadd is set to release his second studio album About Strange Lands and People on November 3rd. 

In 2015, Daniel Gadd was 25 and living in a small fishing village on the coast of Cape Town. With only a guitar, harmonica and a couple of borrowed microphones, he recorded a set of eight intimate songs. That first album, As If in a Dream I Drifted at Sea, would go on to be described in Mojo Magazine by writer Sylvie Simmons as having had “a similar impact on me as Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago: a songwriter isolated among the elements with his memories who emerges with a mesmerising collection of songs.”

About Strange Lands and People is a new collection of songs — soft-spoken, warm, nostalgic and dreamlike. Much like his debut, the album was originally recorded solo back in 2018, in a beautiful old church in the Northamptonshire countryside. “On the second morning, a local woman walked in with her family and cheerily asked us what we were up to. It turned out to be Geri Halliwell and when she left she said “Good luck with your music.” So in a very real sense this album has been blessed by a Spice Girl… in a church,” says Gadd. 

“Though I loved those solo, acoustic recordings, I felt that the songs were calling out for more players. So I somehow convinced my producer Jonjo Keefe to do it all over again, but this time in the studio with a band. In 2022 we produced the record together, adding to the arrangements and shaping the songs into their final form,” he continues. 

Recorded at The Premises Studios in London, the folk influences and gentle, reflective nature of Gadd’s debut album are still there, but they’ve evolved into something a little less fragile and sparse. Each song is a kind of vignette — a window into a different place, time or personality. This album is the work of an artist who observes things, who uses music and poetry to try and find his own place in the world. 

Released today, lead single ‘A Scene From Some Old Poem’ was written a long time ago, just after Gadd moved to London from Cape Town. “I was looking for work and staying at my Aunt’s house near Heathrow Airport. I remember sitting in the garden with my guitar working out the chords and lyrics while every now and then an aeroplane would pass overhead,” says Gadd.  

Musically, on About Strange Lands and People Gadd draws influence from artists such as Bob Dylan, Leif Vollebekk, Laura Marling, Adrianne Lenker, The Tallest Man on Earth and Leonard Cohen. Thematically, there’s a sense of “wandering” woven throughout the album’s 10 tracks. Whether it’s about a relationship, a friendship, a feeling of being out of place or even a feeling of being in the right place, each track in its own way seems to deal with the fact that the search has to continue and never really ends. 

Tracklist
Can't Stop The Leaves
The Painter
Shepherd's Star
A Scene From Some Old Poem
First Goodbye
A Statue Part-Concealed
April Sky
At the Edge of the World
Things Always Break
About Strange Lands and People