The Blue Aeroplanes announce new album ‘Tales From The Silver Lounge’
The Blue Aeroplanes | Photo credit: Bee Monelle
Beloved Bristolian art-rockers The Blue Aeroplanes have announced new album Tales From The Silver Lounge for release on 27th November through ArtStar Records, alongside a handful of live performances this November and December. Also shared today is the album's lead single 'Silver Lounge'.
After two best-of compilation albums were released by Chrysalis Records in 2025 (Magical Realism: The Best Of The Blue Aeroplanes and Outsider Art: The Other Best Of The Blue Aeroplanes), the band are now back firmly in a sort of present with some predictably great songwriting on this, their 14th album.
The Blue Aeroplanes have been delivering their distinctive brand of rackety sprechgesang for four decades now, and they are showing no signs of slowing down here. Helmed by the inimitable Gerard Langley, the band create a whole new world in which to tell the story of The Silver Lounge.
Naturally, the songs take us on a wild guitar-driven ride, with poems that cover name-doppelgangers, falconry terms, Don Marquis, postcards, Greek mythology, abandoned Teslas, clocks going backwards, a meeting in God’s waiting room, suburban partying-envy, First World War ghosts predicting new conflicts and a factory full of dismembered dolls.
The lead single and title track gets its name from a John Byrne painting, which is also the album’s cover artwork. During long hospital stints in recent years, one thing Gerard found himself doing was reading through exhibition catalogues. The Byrne painting of a long-closed establishment on Paisley High Street is not only the cover art for this album but also now proudly hangs in his living room. The cafe in the painting's imagined customers combines with some other themes, and things from the band and Gerard's life to make the basis of most of the album.
Lead singer Gerard Langley comments on the new single:
"Silver Lounge is a punk romp through slightly nightmarish recollections, based on conversations overheard in The Silver Lounge, a disreputable dockside bar on a British 1950’s-themed planet. The bar, whose clientele range across galaxies and times, has a bad reputation, and their conversations are highly unreliable. But they like a singalong in the early hours, so we’ve given it a rousing chorus. It’s a thrilling evocation of a half-remembered (don’t drink the cocktails) night at the legendary Silver Lounge, all wrapped up in a vivacious 1950’s poetry meets Adam & The Ants two minutes and twenty seconds. And you don’t even have to book an interplanetary flight to get there!"
Continuing about the album he says:
“All the recording was done at Bristol’s Humm Studios in two intense sessions, and it’s got a seriously cool John Byrne painting on the sleeve, by kind permission of the John Byrne Estate.
It’s been made by a line-up that has lasted pretty much unchanged for fourteen years. The almost telepathic closeness of the band members is obvious all over the album, especially in the closing ‘Apostrophe Catastrophe Apostrophe’. Long-time fans take note, this is as good as anything we’ve done. New fans of ‘speak/singing’ bands, start here.”
Pre-order the forthcoming album 'Tales From The Silver Lounge' here
Watch the video for 'Silver Lounge' on YouTube below.
The Blue Aeroplanes UK live dates
Tue 24th Nov - Rough Trade East, London [buy tickets here]
Sun 29th Nov - Rough Trade, Bristol [buy tickets here]
Fri 4th Dec - The Fleece, Bristol - SOLD OUT
The Blue Aeroplanes are:
Gerard Langley: Lead vocals, tambourine
Mike Youé: Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lead vocals, backing vocals
Bec Jevons: Electric guitar, bells, lead vocals, backing vocals
Rita Lynch: Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lead vocals, backing vocals
Ed Taylor: Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin, keyboards, backing vocals
Chris Sharp: Bass, backing vocals
John Langley: Drums, percussion
Wojtek Dmochowski: Dance
The Blue Aeroplanes – Tales From The Silver Lounge album tracklisting
1. Silver Lounge
2. Going To Heaven In A Handcart
3. Soap Star
4. We Must Stop Meeting Like This
5. The Post-War Occupation Of Jealous Town
6. Billy McCrae
7. Make Something Happen
8. Give Her The Bells And Let Her Fly
9. Doll Parts
10. Birds And Snakes
11. Apostrophe Catastrophe Apostrophe
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