John Grant has announced a new album called The Art of the Lie. The former Czars member’s follow-up to 2021’s Boy From Michigan is set for release on June 14 via Bella Union. Along with the announcement, he’s unveiled the new song ‘It’s a Bitch’, which you can hear below.
“It was a blast making this track which is just about having fun with words, synths and dope rhythms and bass lines and also making fun of post-COVID malaise,” Grant said of ‘It’s a Bitch’ in a statement. “Plus, people get to ponder what a ‘hesher’ is. I loved going to the arcade in the 80s and watching smokin’-hot heshers hold court while playing Tempest, Stargate, Robotron and Asteroids, and while also blasting Iron Maiden and Rush on their Walkmans.”
Grant made The Art of the Lie with producer Ivor Guest. It features contributions from Dave Okumu of the Invisible, Robin Mullarkey, Seb Rochford, and Rachel Sermanni. “We could often only work for two weeks at a time, it was so intense,” Grant recalled. “Ivor assembled a team of incredible musicians. Dave Okumu [from The Invisible] is such an incredible guitar player. He came into the room when we were playing the demo of ‘Father’ and just immediately started doing what you hear on the record. Robin Mullarkey played fretless bass and blew my mind, and the very talented Seb Rochford was on drum detail. There were a lot of moments of magic from everyone.”
“The first time I heard ‘Time It’s Time’, the last song on The Colour of Spring by Talk Talk; or ‘The Night of the Swallow’ by Kate Bush, on The Dreaming; or some of Jane Siberry’s material on The Speckless Sky or anything by Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance; those were important moments for me in music,” Grant added. “And of course there is a bit of the Devo spirit in everything I do in some way or another. There’s a lot of amazing humour in their music but they were also serious as a heart attack. I guess this is one of the important themes in my life; it’s about moments and being able to recognize them and be in them while they are happening in spite of whatever else is going on. It’s being in a taxi, the most normal situation in the world and seeing the grandeur, the sheer weight and majesty of a big city passing by, staring in awe. The absurdity of the world on the outside juxtaposed with the world taking place on the inside. That fascinates me, the ability to capture what it really feels like to be a human.”
The album title alludes to Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal, which Grant said is “now seen by MAGA disciples as just another book of the Bible and Trump himself as a messiah sent from heaven. Because, God wants you to be rich.” He elaborated:
This album is in part about the lies people espouse and the brokenness it breeds and how we are warped and deformed by these lies. For example, the Christian Nationalist movement has formed an alliance with White Supremacist groups and together they have taken over the Republican party and see LGBTQ+ people and non-whites as genetically and even mentally inferior and believe all undesirables must be forced either to convert to Christianity and adhere to the teachings of the Bible as interpreted by them or they must be removed in order that purity be restored to ‘their’ nation. They now believe Democracy is not the way to achieve these goals. Any sort of pretence of tolerance that may have seemed to develop over the past several decades has all but vanished. It feels like the U.S. in is free-fall mode.
The Art of the Lie Cover Artwork:
The Art of the Lie Tracklist:
1. All That School For Nothing
2. Marbles
3. Father
4. Mother And Son
5. Twistin Scriptures
6. Meek AF
7. It’s A Bitch
8. Daddy
9. The Child Catcher
10. Laura Lou
11. Zeitgeist
