Courteeners are gearing up to release their most collaborative, forward-looking album yet: the pop-leaning and exploratory Pink Cactus Café.
Their seventh album, out October 25 on Ignition Records, arrives after a transformative few years for the band – most recently last year putting on a fitting 15th anniversary victory lap for their breakthrough debut album St Jude, including a huge, sell-out show at their home city’s Heaton Park. Courteeners have sold out the iconic outdoor venue – which has hosted the likes of Oasis and The Stone Roses – 3 times over as a band, with their most recent gig selling out in just eight hours.
Still, despite the celebratory memories dominating their touring schedule, Liam Fray was adamant he wanted to forge forward with Courteeners’ newest material behind closed doors. “I want to be one of those bands that can grow older gracefully,” he says. “I don’t know if it is an age thing, but I think you start to put a bit more pressure on stuff, because there’s this back catalogue that you feel protective over. It’s okay if people dislike a song or whatever, but I am protective of … I guess legacy is a weird word, but we’ve been a band getting on for eighteen years. You start to belong to other people”
While he’s best known as an incendiary, indie rock frontman, off-stage Liam is animated and thoughtful, picking his words carefully to articulate himself as precisely as he can. It’s easy to see how this reflective nature also shapes many of Courteeners’ sharpest lyrics, which have always grappled with weighty topics such as masculinity, identity, and the biggest of all, love. Describing himself as a relatively “private” person off-stage, his songwriting is where Liam lets loose and expresses himself most fully, with a sensitivity that sets Courteeners apart.
Seven albums into a career spanning almost twenty years, Liam jokes that Courteeners have “never really been flavour of the month” – but instead of a single flash-in-the-pan moment in the spotlight, the band now have the full force of longevity behind them. Trusting his creative instincts above everything else has clearly proven liberating for Liam, and this highly collaborative new record feels like yet another vital turning point in the journey of Courteeners.
