Nearly three years since announcing their arrival with debut mini album, ‘Forward March’ and a series of shows that saw Uncut declare the band ‘God’s own orchestra’ and NME go goggle eyed at their ‘apocalyptic preaching’ The Strange Death Of Liberal England return with their full length debut album, ‘Drown Your Heart Again’.

Recorded with producer Dave Allen (The Cure, Depeche Mode) at the helm after he tracked down the band and with a crew including the massed brass, strings and percussion of The Richard P Horne Youth Orchestra at The Old Blacksmith’s Studio in Portsmouth, ‘Drown Your Heart Again’ is an album lyrically steeped in the coastal environment from which it sprung, musically shot through with elements of mariachi brass, military drums, sweeping strings, punching brass and psychedelic echoes. It is a full return on the early promise many identified on ‘Forward March’, intelligent, experimental, but, at heart, a pop record.

‘Drown Your Heart Again’ is the product of the eighteen months following last single, ‘Angelou’ that saw the band remove themselves from public view. With the benefit of experience from their first taste of band life and a unified decision to ‘not take the long way round’ in the words of lead singer and lyricist Adam Woolway the album was crystallised by the band’s one public performance in that time, a sold out, fully seated, orchestral show with The Richard P Horne Youth Orchestra at Portsmouth’s New Theatre Royal that set the tone and bar for the album sessions.

To call the album a labour of love would not be amiss. The studio gave free time, Dave Allen lived in a camper van outside it for the duration of the sessions (that later was used in a car-bombing at a Nissan garage in High Wycombe but that’s another story), the orchestra gave their time for free, making ‘Drown Your Heart Again’ the product of a community.

The Strange Death Of Liberal England are Adam Woolway (vocals / guitar), William Charlton (guitars), Andrew Wright (glockenspiel / keys / percussion), Kelly Jones (bass guitars), David Lindsay (drums).