New Music - Great North 'The Late Bus Home' - September 2017

Photo by Greta Van Der Star

London-based Kiwi folk duo Great North have revealed that their long-awaited fourth album The Golden Age will be released on 20 October and share the first single from the album ‘The Late Bus Home.’

‘The Late Bus Home’ features elements of the folk sound familiar to fans of the two-time New Zealand Music Award-winning group*, while hinting at the more Americana-rock influences to be revealed on The Golden Age.

In the true spirit of Americana music, the album is a deeply personal one, written and co-produced by singer and multi-instrumentalist Hayden Donnell, who outlines his thoughts on the album and 'The Late Bus Home' with typical candour.

“A lot of the songs were about the tyranny of nostalgia - that low-level panic our best days are irrecoverably gone and life is passing us by in a series of probably wrong decisions which we can never get back.” Donnell says.

“My friend Sam died when I was about halfway through writing the album. Those themes suddenly became a lot more immediate and visceral. 'The Late Bus Home' isn’t just me saying “take me back to when we were young and had dreams” or something. It’s more about this desire to go back so you can say something different or work out why this happened, and the ultimate futility of that feeling.

“I think in focusing so much on regrets, I was trying to redeem them in a way. I didn’t want to write about wanting to reclaim big successes so much as the small moments. It’s saying the glory isn’t some imagined destination - it’s in travelling together, even if the road goes nowhere. Mainly it’s a song for a friend who we miss.”

Great North embark on their second major tour of 2017 in the Netherlands on 28 September, continuing throughout Europe until 14 November.

A second single and more album information will be revealed ahead of the release of The Golden Age digitally and in stores on CD and vinyl on 20 October.