Joseph Arthur - Diamond Ring & Slide Away Video

Joseph Arthur
Diamond Ring & Slide Away
Video

Joseph Arthur will release 2 new albums, through 14th Floor Records on 3 September. Check out these two videos, Diamond Ring & Slide Away.

Yes, albums plural: Joseph will release his solo album 'Nuclear Daydream', which was released in the US late last year to rave reviews, as well as 'Let's Just Be', recorded with his band The Lonely Astronauts. Joseph Arthur will simultaneously release two new albums, Nuclear Daydream and Let's Just Be, in the UK on September 3 through 14th Floor Records. The albums will be preceded by the release of a single 'Enough To Get Away', taken from Nuclear Daydream, on August 27.

Nuclear Daydream is Arthur's fifth full-length album, a lushly composed collection of 12 original and epic songs of romance and despair, from one of the world's most prolific artists. The album was released in the US late last year to widespread acclaim. Vanity Fair described the album as "a glorious work of art", while Entertainment Weekly called it "an epic tale of romantic loss that is haunting, mournful, and ultimately hopeful."

Let's Just Be was written immediately after Arthur's last tour with his new band The Lonely Astronauts - Kraig Jarret Jonson (Golden Smog, The Jayhawks), Jennifer Turner (Natalie Merchant), Greg Wieczorek (Twilight Singers) and Sibyl Buck (Champion Of Sound). Filled with ideas, the band found themselves entrenched in a Los Angeles studio for three weeks, where it is rumoured that such was the level of inspired creativity during the sessions that well over 80 tracks were recorded. "The idea for us was to record all of these new songs straight to tape using only 16 tracks with no reverb, sort of a back to basics like how the Stones or Neil Young used to record," says Arthur.

Joseph Arthur was born in Akron, Ohio, became a song-writing obsessive in Atlanta, Georgia, and later moved to New York, where he still lives. In 1996, Joseph was a guitar salesman working for the minimum wage at Clark's Music in Atlanta. Frustrated, broke, musing on a life of crime, he returned home one day to find a message on his answerphone that would change everything. The calm, quintessentially English voice he heard belonged to Peter Gabriel. The surreal and the hyper-real merged with Gabriel and his buddy Lou Reed coming to see Joseph play a showcase gig in New York, after which they all dined alongside Dolly Parton. Soon, Joseph would become the first rock artist to sign to Gabriel's Real World label, releasing Big City Secrets in 1996, the 7-song EP Vacancy in 1999, Come To Where I'm From in 2000, and Redemption's Son in 2002. In July 2005 Arthur released the album Our Shadows Will Remain in the UK through 14th Floor Records. The album was rapturously commended with Time Out describing it as "a series of beautifully crafted songs. Majestic" and the Sunday Times "as good as music gets".