The SEVENDIALS album “A Crash Course in Catastrophe” is out today via Cadiz Music/Creation Youth Music in CD, vinyl, and streaming formats! Also released is a video for a second single, a cover of SPARKS’ “Number One Song in Heaven”.
In the 19th century, London’s West End area known as Seven Dials was notoriously dangerous and disreputable; a very dangerous place to be after dark. This darkness and danger provided the perfect inspiration for the dusky, foreboding sounds created by this new musical union now known as SEVENDIALS.
The first single, “Zodiac Morals”, will be released on February 28th 2025. It’s a a swaggering premonition of disaster propelled by the thunder of Paul’s drums and Mark’s weaponized guitar. What’s it about? “Using the stars to guide you because the terrain is always too dark: are the stars twinkling with hope? Or are they spent and dead infernos? The word zodiac began to have negative implications when the ZODIAC KILLER became part of the collective zeitgeist, anti-morals, zodiac morals.”
A CRASH COURSE IN CATASTROPHE, the debut album by SEVENDIALS, will follow on April 4th via Cadiz Music/CreationYouth.
If you’re in or visiting the Chicago area this summer, make plans to see Chris at one of these upcoming events!
PS: Stay tuned for a special announcement on Tuesday, June 25th!
Saturday, June 22 – Chris and Sons of the Silent Age perform at SUMMERFEST MILWAUKEE. More information and tickets
Saturday, June 29 – Chris will be guiding a tour at the The Museum of Post Punk and Industrial Music. Get tickets
Saturday, July 13 – Chris doing a solo set at Outta Space Arts, playing a cross section of all his material. Rachel Swain, the opener, sang with Chris on DECIBELS FROM HEART. Get tickets
Monday, July 29 – Chris and Sons of the Silent Age perform a new edition of The Cracked Actor Cabaret at City Winery. Get tickets
Friday, August 16 – Chris will join the Plastic Crimewave Syndicate to sing some proto-punk and biker psyche gems at the Million Tongues Festival at Empty Bottle. Get tickets
While the album is available as a digital download, many fans will be interested in the limited edition CD release which ships with a unique piece of art by Chris (charcoal and pencil art on paper). The CD with artwork can be ordered from Bandcamp — and note that there are copies shipping from the UK as well as the US.
This album serves as an impressionistic view of my life in Edinburgh before I moved to the States, leaving behind what I now realize is unfinished business, unresolved aspirations, like a plant viciously ripped out by the roots and thrown away.
Following the death of my mother in 2023, I spent time wandering around the streets on my own, trying to place the melancholy, trying to steal back the essence of joy I felt in my late teens/early 20s, and it inevitably led me to write, which is the way I have always been able to answer my own questions.
There are 8 songs on this album, each rich with strong feelings of then and now, memories that may or may not be accurate, locations, events, friends and lovers. I want the listener to walk with me quietly through endless days and nights, through the streets of Edinburgh in the early 1980s, over the tenement rooftops, up the hills with cans of Red Stripe and a well stoked hash pipe. Sitting in the Wee Red Bar, Bannermans, The Gilded Balloon, or the Royal Circus. Playing endless nights of music with my beloved FINI TRIBE, dancing at the Hoochie Coochie Club.
Some of these songs are half submerged in dreams, the locations distorted, the colors heightened, the times fluid. If you knew me back then, and we were pals, you are represented, and thanks for the memories.
I no longer live there – life and its commitments have me elsewhere – but I miss it badly and have never felt at home anywhere except Edinburgh, where my soul continues to walk the New Town streets and climb the hills.
All physical copies of this album come with a unique drawing by myself. They are not copies, they are originals in charcoal and pencil of the memories that surround and thrive at the heart of this album. I sat down over a period of time and just drew, it was visceral, emotional, and a lot of fun.
A special shout out to the FINI TRIBE, stars of the song and video for FINI CHAGALL.
Album details and notes:
So Long, Ariane
Swords at St. Peter’s
Lost to Your Amour
Odeon
The Scars
Fini Chagall
Port of St. Catherine
Midnight on the Swansway
All songs written by CHRIS CONNELLY
Voice, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, sax, percussion, synth, bass, and harmonica by CHRIS CONNELLY
Mastered by JAMES SCOTT at Populist Recordings
Recorded at THE ROCK NOIR, September/October 2023
Front cover drawing: “Dancing at the Hooch” by Chris Connelly (charcoal and pencil on paper, 2023)
Back cover photograph of the Dean Village by GILLIAN WHISKER (with thanks)
Layout by KIMBERLY BLESSING
Dedicated to the lovers on St. Stephen’s
Video for “Fini Chagall” by KIMBERLY BLESSING. Includes footage of Fini Tribe taken by ANGUS CAMERON in the 1980s.
