Coming to Sheffield City Hall on Thursday, 18 February 2027
Jake Bugg is back! The rock troubadour returns with his seventh album Alamo, and first on Thirty Tigers, on November 13th. Alongside the announcement Jake has also released the album’s first taste ‘Never Can Tell’ and details of a 2027 UK and EU solo tour.
Produced by multi-grammy winning duo of longtime friend and producer Jimmy Hogarth (Anohni, Amy Winehouse, Paolo Nutini) and Steve McKewan (Chris Stapleton, Carrie Underwood, Eminem), Alamo sees Jake return to his folk leaning roots - raw, real and unguarded. Now 32, the album is an 11 track testament to his matured craft as a songwriter and an open-hearted revelation of his journey as a man through love and loneliness and back again. It’s an album that rolls along with pure but lush and authentic country music arrangements that get straight to the heart of the matter with nothing to hide behind.
There’s a battle-born that runs through Alamo. The finger pickin’ good Dylan and Cohen-inspired rootsy roadsong of ‘Day By Day’ as Bugg offers that “I’d like to make a difference, I’d like to make some sense, but everything is closing in” – an ode to just waking up every day and trying to leave the world a better place than you found it, despite what it throws in your face. On the tender and yearning opener ‘When The Night’ Jake pines “I find myself wishing I was someone else,” asking the album’s core question, as Bugg puts it, of “what does isolation really feel like and lead you to do?” The album’s title-track sees Jake navigate the pains of being in a relationship that’s crumbling around you and the poignant ‘Cloud In The Sky’ is Jake at his most open, untangling ghosts from the past.
“After all the years of touring and making records, it just felt like the right time to look inward. The last couple of years have been tough for me and I’ve had a lot of struggles. I’m trying to navigate those and figure out where they stem from,” Jake says of the record. “‘Alamo’ was only going to work if I was going to be honest and be as vulnerable as possible. I’ve always had a lot of defenses and barriers around me. I thought it was time to bring those down.”
The album’s first cut comes in the form of the infectious, country tinged ‘Never Can Tell’. A rollicking, guitar driven anthem about navigating the friendships that find their way to you after finding success, the track is Jake at his direct and honest best. “It’s really fucking hard to know who to trust in this day and age, especially growing up how I did and having to be vigilant and observant of the people around you,” Jake said of the track. “The song is about that. Life throws so many parallels at you and it’s hard to know which way to go. People tell you different things and you’ve just got to go with what your gut tells you.”
On sale now!