Releases
KING KRULE - MAN ALIVE! RED VINYL LP/LP/CD IN STORES FEB 21
King Krule has announced the release of his forthcoming album Man Alive!, due Feb 21 via True
Panther/Matador Records.
Archy Ivan Marshall has the world at his feet. After two feverishly received albums as King Krule, plus
another low-key outing under his own name, this extraordinarily gifted 25-year-old from Peckham in
South London adds further depth and substance to his oeuvre with his new, wondrous long-player, Man
Alive!.
It arrives packed full of his trademark sonic ambition and compositional skill, as well as the now-familiar
corrosive lyricism and lurid social observation. Marshall has emerged as a pack leader amongst his
peers, leading the charge in a fearless blurring of genre divisions.
The album was written as a direct reaction to the non-stop energy of touring The Ooz, and then partly
recorded at Shrunken Heads in Marshall’s native stamping ground of Nunhead, with Ooz co-producer
Dilip Harris. Increasingly self-sufficient in the studio, he manned most of the instruments himself, except
for the saxophone, which was played by his trusty Argentinian amigo, Ignacio Salvadores.
Midway through those sessions, however, Archy found out he was going to become a dad for the first
time, and he decided to move up to the North West to be near the mother’s family, ready for the baby’s
arrival.
Archy Marshall’s longstanding love of cinema seeps out in his first foray into directing, with a video for
“(Don’t Let The Dragon) Draag On” that pulls influences from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s classic The Passion
Of Joan Of Arc while still creating a typically wry King Krule visual.
Man Alive! will be available on CD, standard black vinyl, indie record store exclusive red vinyl.
“A masterpiece of jaundiced vision from one of the most compelling artists alive.” – Pitchfork, 9.0 review
of The OOZ
.
“Timelessly cool.” – The New York Times
“He is the kind of storyteller who knows what makes a memorable story: a blend of the everyday and the
unexpected, relatable situations told with perfect timing.” – The New Yorker
Midway sessions for the new album, Archy found out he was going to become a dad for the first time,
and he decided to move up to the North West to be near the mother’s family, ready for the baby’s arrival.
“I should’ve had it all wrapped up before my daughter was born,” says Marshall today with a sheepish
grin, during a return visit to his favourite public house in Nunhead, right across the street from Shrunken
Heads. Impending parenthood came at a felicitous moment for him, as he was beginning to feel trapped
in South London’s suburban lifestyle of all-eclipsing drunkenness and depression, which existing fans will
know was a recurring theme in his earlier music.
“It was just the easiness of it,” he reflects today. “There really is nothing else to do here, especially when
it turns to winter. Everyone I know has jobs, whereas I’d sit on my arse all day sometimes not doing
anything, then I’d go to the pub with them when they finished work. It became a bit habitual. Then, right in
the middle of the record, this big change came in my life that I didn’t really comprehend initially. It was
like, ‘Oh, I’d better get my shit together!’ To be honest, I was really glad to get away from all that so I
could focus on more pressing matters – like keeping a child alive and stuff.”
The new album’s title, he explains, “is an exclamation, about the times we live in. Like, ‘Fucking hell,
man!’” He stole the title from a CD that his uncle gave him back in 2013 with some of his uncle’s own
music on it, and originally planned to use it for his last album. “But The Ooz really summed up that
record,” he reasons, “just this splurge of everything I love – messy and with no direction. I thought,
anyway, ‘Nah, I can’t steal it off him’, but now I’m like, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna use it!’ I haven’t really spoken to
him about it actually. I just liked the idea of it as an exclamation. It’s kind of like, ‘Oh shit!’, but I didn’t
wanna call it that, I wanted it to be ‘Man Alive!’ – super-Americanized, like a saying from Adam West as
Batman.”
Selections:
1. Cellular
2. Supermarché
3. Stoned Again
4. Comet Face
5. The Dream
6. Perfecto Miserable
7. Alone, Omen 3
8. Slinky
9. Airport Antenatal Airplane
10. (Don’t Let The Dragon) Draag On
11. Theme For The Cross
12. Underclass
13. Energy Fleets
14. Please Complete Thee
