Birmingham singer-songwriter releases new album

Local influences on acclaimed musician’s new work.

Celebrated Birmingham singer-songwriter James Summerfield will release his fifth studio album Analogue Tales: Sounds From Arden on Monday 22nd June 2015, via Commercially Inviable Records.

The record, a rich and vivid exploration of city of Birmingham and surrounding areas of the English Midlands, features the words of friend and poet Darren Cannan set to James Summerfield’s striking yet elegant take on Americana.

Lyrically, Analogue Tales: Sounds From Arden covers ground familiar to most residents of the city, with the Jewellery Quarter, Longbridge Rover car plant, the M42, Ladywood, Birmingham city centre and Sutton Coldfield featuring in the allegories, observations, asides and stories that make up the album.

The extraordinary pictures of the region’s people, landscapes and identity has further detail added by the voices of guest narrators The Beat frontman Ranking Roger, broadcaster Robin Valk, James Summerfield’s grandmother Marjorie Summerfield, authors Mike Gayle and Catherine O’Flynn, and songwriter and actor Paul Murphy.

A favourite of legendary broadcaster and disc jockey the late John Peel, the Birmingham-born singer-songwriter played with Buick 6 (later The Toques) throughout the mid-2000s before self-recording his acclaimed debut solo album Hailah, Hailah aged 21. Since then, he has gone on to produce a further three solo albums and tour with Ivor Novello award-winning artist Scott Matthews.

Recorded in the intimate surroundings of Birmingham’s 100% analogue Highbury Studio, Analogue Tales: Sounds From Arden is, in the eyes of James Summerfield, the best work he’s produced to date. It’s available on vinyl, CD and download from Monday 22nd June 2015, via Commercially Inviable Records.

Pic (c) Jamie Ryan-Ainslie