John Grant today announces his new album The Art Of The Lie due for release 14th June via Bella Union and available to preorder here. To accompany the announcement Grant has shared a trailer for the album which features the funky first single ‘It’s A Bitch’ with a 70s and 80s synth laden groove and housing a deeper message, it’s available on all streaming platforms now – watch HERE.
Commenting on ‘It’s A Bitch’ Grant says: “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. 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.”
Additionally, Grant has announced news of an extensive UK & EU tour in October and November, the dates of which are listed further down.
John Grant began thinking about The Art of The Lie in the Autumn of 2022. Earlier that year, John had been introduced to Ivor Guest, producer and composer at Grace Jones’ Southbank show, the finale of her Meltdown Festival. They began talking about two records Guest had worked on, ‘Hurricane’ for Jones, ‘Prohibition’ for Brigitte Fontaine. “Grace and Brigitte are two very big artists for me,” says Grant. “I love the albums he did for them. ‘Hurricane’ is an indispensable piece of Grace’s catalogue.” An idea was sparked. “I said, I really think you should do this next record with me. He said, I think you’re right.”
A year and a half later, the result is John Grant’s most opulent, cinematic, luxurious album yet: The Art of The Lie. As the title suggests, the lyrical ingenuity counterweighted under all this considered musical largesse is as dark as its production is epic and bold. Ivor Guest and his cast-list of storied musicians have brought the drama, flecks of intrigue as beguiling as Laurie Anderson or The Art of Noise. John Grant has earthed it in deeply felt humanity and pitch-black realism. “The clothing that it’s dressed up in makes it more palatable,” he says. “It helps the bitter pill go down. Music and humour are how I’ve always dealt with the dark side of life. Come to think of it, it’s how I deal with the good side too.”
Grant likens the musical flavours of The Art of the Lie to the sumptuous Vangelis soundtrack for Bladerunner or the Carpenters if John Carpenter were also a member. While undeniably a John Grant record, nestling humour into tragedy, bleeding anger into compassion, there is a musical ambition and nerve to The Art of the Lie which offsets its most political and personal moments.
The hard juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty makes for compelling listening on Grant’s sixth album, a record that ties childhood trauma to hardened adult after-effects, twinning both to the political malaise of America 2024, a country being drawn to the precipice of its own destruction. “We were allowed to feel like we belonged for a couple of seconds,” says Grant. “Not anymore.”
‘The Art of the Lie’ is a considered title, taken from the song ‘Meek AF’, itself a lyrical inversion of the biblical edict that the meek shall inherit the earth. Against a lubricated groove, some Zapp-esque talk box and a spidery keyboard figure, Grant sets out his understanding of the new ethics of America. “Trump’s book, ‘The Art of the Deal’, 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.”
“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”, he says. “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.”
John Grant UK & EU tour dates:
17.10.24 – London – Hackney Church
19.10.24 – Sunderland – The Fire Station
21.10.24 – Glasgow – Barrowland Ballroom
22.10.24 – Dublin – Vicar Street
24.10.24 – Cardiff – Tramshed
25.10.24 – Bristol – Bristol Beacon
26.10.24 – Bexhill – De La Warr Pavilion
28.10.24 – Birmingham – Birmingham Town Hall
29.10.24 – Norwich – Epic Studios
31.10.24 – Manchester – New Century Hall
01.11.24 – Leeds – Project House
02.11.24 – Liverpool – Liverpool Philharmonic
05.11.24 – Amsterdam – Melkweg MAX
06.11.24 – Cologne – Kulturkirche
07.11.24 – Berlin – Columbia Theatre
09.11.24 – Aarhus – Train
10.11.24 – Copenhagen – Vega
11.11.24 – Stockholm – Nalen
13.11.24 – Oslo – Rockefeller Music Hall
Photo: Hörður Sveinsson
