Frank Turner Reveals 'Be More Kind' LP, To Tour Australia In 2018

2 February 2018 | 3:00 pm | Alex Sievers
Originally Appeared In

The world really needs a new Frank Turner record in 2018, and the man himself is more than happy to provide.

The world really needs a new Frank Turner record in 2018, and the man himself is more than happy to provide. 



Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls is set to arrive on May 4th via Xtra Mile Recordings/Polydor Records and it follows both 2015's solid 'Positive Songs for Negative People' and 2017’s 'Songbook' retrospective compilation album.

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Frank Turner himself said of this new historically-pulling, political-based but still very personal record that, "I wanted to try and get out of my comfort zone and do something different. Somewhere in the record, there’s a convergence of the ideas of personal and political, which is a central theme of the album."

The album's title is actually based on a line from Australian writer and poet, Clive James, called Leçons Des Ténèbres (meaning "lessons of darkness") which reads: "I should have been more kind. It is my fate. To find this out, but find it out too late." On the LP's name, the former Million Dead frontman and occasional Mongol Horde singer stated that this one-off line "...devastated me the first time I read it. A lot of older, wiser people tend to say things like that, that the things that come out in the wash at the end of a human life are the way you treated the people around you. In the modern world, that’s a lesson that all of us, myself included could do to learn."

The record's first cut off the tanks, the angry '1933' is a snappy song about the unchanging views and the very real dangerous cynicism seen in baby boomers and "the greatest generation"; a song that the singer has actually aimed at hard-right leaning conservatives and alt-right groups after remarks tying said people to punk rock. On that odd and rather idiotic remark, Turner said in a recent statement that, "That [comment] filled me with a mixture of incredulity and anger. The idea that Breitbart or Steve Bannon think they have anything to do with punk rock makes me extremely angry. These ideas are surfacing again that collectively, as a species, we’ve already shot down."

This new shuffling indie-folk track is dolled up in all of Turner's cut-throat lyrics and gritty songwriting heart, while the rest of The Sleeping Souls deliver their colourful and lively folk-rock instrumentals with the usual slight hints of punk residing just beneath the surface. And as to be expected from the collaborative pair, it's another damn fine tune to add to both Turner's and The Sleeping Souls' extensive back catalogue of life-affirming tracks.

Now, the last time that Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls were here in Australia was back in 2015 for a brilliant run of shows (truly, their set at that Corner Hotel could not have been more perfect) and they'll be back on our shores in early December. Check out the full list of dates and tickets here!



If you want a little bit more from Frank Turner - as well as an acoustic version of '1933' - before this new record drops, check out the live Facebook stream he did to coincide with the single's release and the record's announcement: