From his acclaimed debut ‘Is Everything Okay In Your World?’ to his expansive second album ‘A Day In A Yellow Beat’, Yellow Days has become renowned for audaciously dashing between genres – in the process consistently alighting the imagination of fans as well as like-minded creative spirits such as Mac DeMarco, Tyler, The Creator and Tom Waits.
Set to unwrap his most singular creation to date when his new album ‘HOTEL HEAVEN’ is released on Friday, Yellow Days now shares a final taste in the shape of his new single ‘FINER THINGS IN LIFE’.
Never an artist to take the most obvious direction, Yellow Days pulls all manner of tricks from his hat to construct ‘FINER THINGS IN LIFE’ with: a dark trip that takes in woozy, seasick psychedelia, heavyweight funk and playful subversions on classic early ‘70s rock tropes – the sound of the past and the present coalescing in thrillingly off-kilter style. Yet for the song’s quirks, its lyrics, delivered in a suave drawl, translate the album’s wider themes in straightforward fashion. Much like luxury is often a facade or a distraction, it realises that the finer things in life are often as simple as a personal connection.
Yellow Days – aka George van den Broek – says, “I’ve never cared about nice stuff, my trousers have cigarette burns in them. Some of my shirts have stains, I’d eat just about anything, and I hate snobbery. The only thing that I care about is being with the one I love. That’s the finer things to me.”
The ‘FINER THINGS IN LIFE’ video takes us deeper into the visual universe of ‘HOTEL HEAVEN’. A porter enters a hotel lift where she’s immediately paranoid of the judgement cast upon her by an older couple heading to dinner. The dinner itself is initially the very definition of excess and indulgence… until a surprise twist pushes events in a stranger, more surreal and altogether less edible direction. It’s a visual which plays on Yellow Days’ key cinematic references for the album – ‘The Shining’, the original ‘Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory’ and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘The Holy Mountain’ – with a touch of the discomforting flair of ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’ for good measure.
A cosmic concept album that was imagined, written, created and realised almost solely by Yellow Days in his east London flat, ‘HOTEL HEAVEN’ is available to pre-order or pre-save HERE. The album has been further previewed by ‘MRS MOONLIGHT’ and the introductory ‘THIS IS HOTEL HEAVEN’.
There will be no traversing a dark desert highway to check into ‘HOTEL HEAVEN’ as Yellow Days will take the experience on the road from next week. The tour starts in the UK, taking in a London show at KOKO, before venturing across Europe ahead of two legs of North American dates. Please see HERE for remaining tickets for the dates below.
APRIL
- 9th – UK, Manchester, Band on the Wall
- 10th – UK, Glasgow, St. Luke’s
- 11th – UK, Bristol, Trinity
- 12th – UK, London, KOKO
- 18th – The Netherlands, Amsterdam, Melkweg
- 19th – Belgium, Antwerp, Trix
- 20th – France, Paris, La Trabendo
- 21st – Germany, Cologne, CBE
- 23rd – Germany, Berlin, Lido
- 24th – Germany, Hamburg, Mojo Club