Split In Two Broken Hands

• 1 Can You Feel It 03:20
• 2 Lazarus 02:54
• 3 Friends House 03:22
• 4 Mess 03:02
• 5 Run Away 03:33
• 6 Split In Two 03:13
• 7 Light Up 03:18
• 8 Wrong Track 03:08
• 9 Thinking Of You 03:06
• 10 For The Night 03:28
• Total Runtime 32:24

Info for Split In Two

Broken Hands have announced new album SPLIT IN TWO. The album marks the UK band’s Atlantic Records debut – frontman Dale Norton remarked, “We grew up listening to the history that this label has created, to now be part of that is pretty crazy.”

SPLIT IN TWO is heralded by new single “Wrong Track,” which Norton characterized, stating, “’Wrong Track’ is about realising you have no choice of your destination in life, but we all have the choice to enjoy the ride. Fate is inevitable but how you get there’s on you...” “Wrong Track” is available now at all DSPs.

Produced by Julian Emery (Nothing But Thieves, Lower Than Atlantis) and mixed by Tom Dalgety (Royal Blood, Pixies, Ghost), “Wrong Track” follows last October’s release of two new tracks, “Friends House” and “Split In Two,” both available for streaming and download HERE. The band also shared the eerie new video for “Friends House” earlier this month.

Broken Hands – who have previously shared stages with such legendary artists as Blur, Black Sabbath, and The Rolling Stones – will celebrate SPLIT IN TWO with a major North American tour. The dates – which see the Canterbury-based band joining Shinedown as special guests on their upcoming “Attention Attention World Tour” – begin June 21st at The Woodlands, TX’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and continue through July.

Hailed by NME for their “bold mini-anthems with subtle experimental undercurrents,” Broken Hands have earned extraordinary acclaim since first emerging in 2015. TURBULENCE, that year’s full-length debut, saw the band fusing fuzzed out blues, psychedelia, and garage into their own brand of what CLASH called “a visceral, almost space rock sound,” declaring the LP to be “a debut of quite rare and vivid originality, with Broken Hands capturing their live energy in a precise yet infectious manner.”

Broken Hands

Broken Hands
Music elicits physical and psychological reactions. Your body moves, and your mood changes in response to the ebb and flow of a song. It’s one of the few singular forces that can seamlessly speak to both our tangible and intangible nature.

Canterbury, UK band Broken Hands stimulate both halves with a two-prong style fueled by half-time gutter groove rock ‘n’ roll and ethereal flights of cerebral sonic exploration. This duality initially powered the group’s 2015 full-length debut, Turbulence. Produced by Tom Dalgety [Royal Blood, Pixies, Ghost], it walked a fine line between arena ambition and alternative adventurousness. Moreover, the record announced the boys—brothers Dale [lead vocals] and Callum Norton [drums, backing vocals], Jamie Darby [lead guitar], Thomas Ford [bass], and David Hardstone [rhythm guitar, keys]—as a critical favorite with acclaim from NME, The Independent, BBC Music Introducing, and more. Simultaneously, they developed a reputation for raucous live shows, performing alongside the likes of The Kills, Catfish and the Bottlemen, The Cult and Deaf Havana in addition to gracing the stage of the world-famous Reading & Leeds festivals.

Along the way, they landed a deal with Atlantic Records stateside and plotted their sophomore effort. Just prior to entering the studio, the pace slowed when Dale endured the sort of nightmare most musicians don’t dare dream about: intensive ear surgery that left him unable to sing or play music for nearly two months.

“I had to have this dissection to basically open up the pathways,” he explains. “I couldn’t do anything after for what felt like forever. I’m probably hearing music completely different from how I did. The upside was I came into this record with a fresh palette.”

Embracing this fresh palette, the band opted to work with producer Julian Emery [Nothing But Thieves, Lower Than Atlantic] on new music with long-term collaborator Dalgety moving to the mixer’s chair. Nodding to American influences as diverse as Nine Inch Nails, Big Brother and The Holding Company, and My Morning Jacket, Broken Hands adopted a “half-time” rhythm. As a result, the guitars, drums, bass, and vocals hit harder as they seesaw back and forth.

“For a British rock guitar band, it’s all about fast, four-to-the-floor singles,” says Dale. “We went slower and heavier. We loved doing the slow vibe. It was a big lightbulb moment.”

Case in point, hulking distortion and sinewy riffing propel the 2018 single “Split In Two” forward at a confident strut before giving way to Dale’s hypnotic hook.

“We literally felt split in two,” says the frontman. “Touring as much as we have, you’re divided from the ones you love and spend the rest of your life. In a psychological sense, you can also feel divided between two things. You’re stuck in a corridor. The idea extends to the sonics. One minute, I want to write a screaming heavy record. In the next, I want to write something tranquil. It’s a push-and-pull.”

Another standout “Friends House” tempers moments of introspection with a bombastic sense of dread siphoned through sparse percussion and a paranoid wail. It draws on a moment when Dale found himself threatened at gunpoint in the midst of the band’s first U.S. tour.

“It’s quite a dark song,” he admits. “You think you’re happy and you think you’re safe, but actually you couldn’t be any further from safety. When you get very intoxicated, you’re happy and comfortable, but it’s actually the most dangerous position to be in. When we first went to the States, I got held up at a bar at 4AM. I was drunk, British, and not familiar with this sort of situation. That could happen anywhere. It’s the illusion of safety.”

In the end, Broken Hands translate duality into definitive anthems. “It’s okay to be divided,” Dale leaves off. “You don’t have to feel like you’ve got to be one thing all of the time physically, psychologically, or musically. Too often in life, people try to tell you to be one thing. We reached a new level by clinging to both sides.”

This album contains no booklet.