Former Shed Seven drummer Alan Leach announces debut solo album

Former Shed Seven drummer Alan Leach has announced details of his debut solo album – listen to first single ‘Clouds Behind The Moon’ below.

The album, titled ‘I Wish I Knew Now What I Thought I Knew Then’, will come out on November 4 and was engineered and mixed by Embrace keys player Mickey Dale.

Discussing the album in a statement, Leach said: “Until I wasn’t in Shed Seven any more, I didn’t realise just how much I was ready for a break and up for trying something different.

I’ve had a lot of these songs buzzing around my head for years, but band life can tie up a lot of your energies, so until now, I never got around to doing anything with them.

“As this is my debut album, I felt like I had a completely blank canvas, so I just threw stuff at it and hoped for the best. Romantic storytelling seems to be where I’m at my most comfortable writing lyrics, but that hasn’t stopped me from attempting to put the world to rights on a couple of songs.”

He added: “Singing has been the big challenge. I went into the studio aiming for the lush northern tones of Jarvis Cocker, Alex Turner, Ian Brown and Richard Hawley, conceding that if the finished product didn’t sound like Frank Sidebottom, then I’d have done ok.”

Listen to ‘Clouds Behind The Moon’ and see the tracklist for ‘I Wish I Knew Now What I Thought I Knew Then’ below.

1. ‘A Dozen Of Me’
2. ‘Clouds Behind The Moon’
3. ‘Erica’
4. ‘Going For A Song’
5. ‘The One Love Generation’
6. ‘If This Comes Off’ (featuring Hayley Hutchinson)
7. ‘Anthem For The Here And Now’
8. ‘Things Like This’
9. ‘Clouds Behind The Moon’ (orchestral version)

On December 2 and 3, Leach will present the album at two gigs at York venue The Crescent. You can buy tickets here.

Back in 2020, Shed Seven raised a chuckle on social media when the Britpop stalwarts were mistaken for shed manufacturers by Twitter users.

“@shedseven why don’t you answer your phones?” one user wrote to the band on Twitter. “I’ve tried without success to contact you for weeks since you failed to instal my shed on 24Nov!” she added, with an extra hashtag: “#crapcustomerservice.”

The band’s songwriter Rick Witter responded: “This is brilliant Jo, when we get back to gigging we formally invite you +1 on the guest list to a gig of your choosing to make it up to you….” to which the tweeter replied: “That would be so much better than having you come and erect my shed!”

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