When: 7.30pm on Friday 15 September 2017
Where: The Eagle Inn, 19 Collier Street, Salford, M3 7DW

We’re delighted to be working with Ultimate Painting’s Jack Cooper, who is touring his debut solo album!

Sandgrown – Jack Cooper of Ultimate Painting’s first solo record – is nine concisely beautiful songs inspired by his hometown of Blackpool and his upbringing on England’s Fylde Coast. Evoking the delicate but often widescreen musicality of Bill Fay and the abstract lyricism of the late 60s Scott Walker records, as well as the more experimental sounds of John Cale and Robert Wyatt, Sandgrown’s tranquil ballads evoke feelings of nostalgia and re-evaluation about where you come from, wherever that may be. Its lead track is North Of Anywhere.

Jack says of the song: ‘I think one good thing about the EU referendum that happened last year is that everyone seems more engaged with politics in the aftermath. I’m quite open with my opinions and I enjoy discussing things, but my opinions change from week to week and like most people my world view changes when I’m presented with a compelling argument. There’s a huge pressure on people and especially young people to think a certain way, especially online. If you don’t subscribe 100% to a particular ideology, then you’re out the club. I think it can be incredibly intimidating nowadays to voice an opinion… If you’re young, maybe people will say “you don’t know what you’re talking about” or if you’re Northern and you voted to leave the EU, you’re immediately a racist.’

‘Everyone’s from somewhere,’ continues Jack. ‘I don’t think it’s particularly important people know this album is about Blackpool, but I think everyone can empathise with the themes on the record.’

Jack spent the first 13 years of his life living in the rural village of Poulton-le-Fylde, about five miles outside Blackpool. On moving into town, he spent his summers as a deckchair attendant, soaking up the community of people who lived and worked around the seafront – lifeguards, carnival workers, donkey owners, skateboarders, transients and hippies. ‘There were just a lot of interesting people around all the time… weirdos who were drawn to the seaside in the summer. Winter would come and you had this huge community of people who didn’t really know what to do.’

By the time Jack was 15, Blackpool’s role as a holiday destination was dwindling due to the introduction of cheap air travel to Europe. Stacks of deckchairs were increasingly left unused, and in the winter months it became a place of drugs, seedy bars and people struggling to get by without the tourist trade. As the Blackpool he knew slipped away, 20-year-old Jack moved to Manchester where he soon began playing in bands and recording.

Sandgrown is about those formative years and the creation of it: ‘I’ve been trying to do this record since I was about 18… I bought my first four-track with the proceeds of a summer working on the promenade and I guess I got sidetracked along the way. I’ve been listening to Terry Allen’s Lubbock (On Everything) a lot and I wanted to make something that painted a picture of a place as vividly as that. I love how Frank Sinatra’s Watertown feels so cinematic.’

Uninhibited by band members for the first time was a freeing experience for Cooper. ‘Recording on my own liberated me to sing more like I actually sing. I think I’ve spent a long time in loud bands singing in a way that can be heard through music,’ Jack says. ‘The songs that I wrote for Sandgrown suit my voice more than anything I’ve done before.’

Working within the confines of a four-track cassette machine, Jack has produced his most satisfying work to date: ‘I love the physicality of working on tape. I’ve always had a four-track but I sought out a particular machine. I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan but I love the sound of Nebraska… I needed that specific machine.’

Sandgrown by Jack Cooper is released 25 August via Trouble In Mind Records.

Tour support comes from Cian Nugent. Night Fiction (January, 2016) is Cian Nugent’s third album but his first taking on the role of singer-songwriter. Where his previous two albums: 2013’s Born With The Caul and 2011’s Doubles saw him exploring extended guitar based instrumentals with his band, The Cosmos, here he has reigned things in and focused his songwriting skills. Guitar fans, do not fear, there is still plenty of soloing and fingerpicking here. With seven songs both solo and with his band, this album amalgamates everything Cian has done up to this point and reveals a more broad palate of influences, including The Velvet Underground, Richard Thompson, Television, Neil Young, John Lennon, Fred Neil, etc.

Local support comes from Manchester’s own Songs For Walter – aka Laurie Hulme. Signed to Red Deer Club, he lists The Magnetic Fields, Bill Callahan and Destroyer among his influences, and has been described by Tom Ravenscroft as ‘one of my favourite discoveries of recent years’.

This show is a co-promotion with Comfortable On A Tightrope.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

Attend on: Facebook