If you follow Chris on social media, then you’ll know that a new video was premiered yesterday, in conjunction with an announcement about his forthcoming album, Doo Wop in the Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed.
The new track, House of 70s evokes Lou Reed’s New York of the early- to mid-70s, distilled into a rock song. The 1960s hippy dream burned out, Altamont in the rear-view mirror — while the queens, the uppers, the downers, and the streets are brought to life by Lou’s pen and guitar, a remorseless sarcasm cutting down the competition with a switchblade, TAXI DRIVER in drag, chain-smoking and blasting the radio at 3 am.
Thanks to SPILL MAGAZINE for premiering the video.
Chris’s obsession with Lou Reed goes back to 1974, when he first spied the cover to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” while out shopping with his mum in Edinburgh. Something caught his nine year-old eye: a nightmarish yet beautiful photo of a strange yellow ghost, not man not woman, all ghost, as yellow as the sodium street light that illuminated the streets there at night. The ghost seemed to be dancing, arms aloft, blurry jewelry, black lips, dead eyes.
Fast forward to now, and he’s still obsessed with the same photo, and the same man. Chris ended up buying the record in the late 70s or early 80s when he was informed by everything that this untameable spirit was every bit the drug dervish, serpent king of NYC, and the encapsulation and custodian of all the real rock myths, along with IGGY, BOWIE and THE DOLLS.
Doo Wop in the Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed brings together a unique mix of Lou Reed’s own compositions, spanning his career from the Velvet Underground on, along with Chris’s own songs, detailing the creative and often turbulent path of Reed’s life from his teenage years through to his death in 2013.
The full album will be made available digitally and on double CD while a selection of tracks will be released on a single 12″ vinyl record on October 16th 2026. Pre-orders are now being taken on Bandcamp. A release gig will also be announced shortly — stay tuned!