After a short hiatus, Embrace start their UK tour on the back of their new album, ‘Love is a Basic Need’. This tour is the 21st celebration of their highly successful number one album ‘The Good Will Out’ which will be played in its entirety. Tobias Halford caught up with songwriter and guitarist Richard as they play the O2 Academy, Newcastle on Thursday 7th March.
Firstly, I absolutely love the new album and I’ve had it on repeat the past few days. ‘Snake Oil’ is one of my particularly favourite tracks…
I thought that should be our first single. We made a band decision on what we thought were the best songs. We had six songs and decided to record them live at The Square Chapel in Halifax with an orchestra and the choir was made up of people that we know.
The first song I listened to by you was ‘All You Good Good People’ on a compilation CD called ‘Shine’…
Well that’s a good start isn’t it [laughs]. I was actually looking through my record collection and saw that CD – and there are some good records on that. We’ll be playing that and some other crowd favourites.
I know you’ve had a few years off, so how did the tour and the album come about?
It was quite an organic process, really. We fell into making this record and we didn’t book a time to make the album as we worked on it as and when we could. This process really worked for us and is something we want to do in the future.
So what can we expect from this tour? Will you be all dressed in leather with a revolving drum kit?
[Laughs]Yeah, we will probably dressed in the same clothes as the other tours which is a nice slimming black. We have been playing around with a few ideas like playing the album in its full then having an extended encore. We don’t know yet but we will probably try one thing one night and see how it goes, but we are spending time on getting it just how we want it.
You’ve played in Newcastle before, so what do you think of the North East crowd?
It’s a great crowd, a lovely crowd that’s similar to Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester. They want to come out and have a good time instead of standing there scratching their chins. They are always getting along, singing along and there is usually smiling faces all around which is expected of a Northern crowd.
Embrace head to 02 Academy, Newcastle on Thursday 7th March. Tickets, priced at £28.05 (including booking fee), are available from seetickets.com.
