SIMON ALDRED (CHERRY GHOST)

HERD RUNNERS – SONGWRITER SIMON ALDRED’S THIRD ALBUM AS CHERRY GHOST – WAS RELEASED A MONTH AGO.

Recorded at Yellow Arch studios in Sheffield with stalwart Richard Hawley associate Colin Elliot on production duties, Aldred’s latest collection of songs is cut from similarly lush but slightly frayed cloth as Hawley’s faded Northern glamour epics COLES CORNER and LADY’S BRIDGE.
Following last year’s left turn into the 1980s-influenced late-night electro-soul of project Out Cold (for a handful of singles, remixes and the album INVASION OF LOVE) – and Aldred’s coming out as gay – the new Cherry Ghost album (reviewed here) delivers a more romantic sound than the widescreen film noir atmospherics of BENEATH THIS BURNING SHORELINE (2010). As Hawley himself might put it, HERD RUNNERS is prone to be “as soft as a bag of tits”…

In this new edition of The Mouthcast, recorded after soundcheck at Cherry Ghost’s recent Brudenell Social Club gig in Leeds, Aldred talks about differences between BENEATH THIS BURNING SHORELINE and the new album. He also reveals how his songwriting / guitar-playing boredom threshold was breached enough for that left turn into the electronica of Out Cold’s INVASION OF LOVE, and he explains why HERD RUNNERS is likely to be the last material he’ll release under the name Cherry Ghost…