Continuing his remarkable productive street, Maximo Park guitarist, and all round artistic engine Duncan Lloyd, returns with new solo single “Laugh So Loud”, the lead single from his upcoming new album.  Damian Robinson caught up with Duncan to talk about the new single, album and other creative outputs.

Congratulations on “Laugh so Loud”, it’s a fantastic guitar driven pop single, in the spirt of Teenage Fanclub or the Lemonheads.  It comes not to long after your 3 EP’s work so god only knows how busy you must be.  Could you tell us a little about the new single please.

Thank you, the single’s a brand new piece of work and comes partly from gigs I was doing, partly at the Cumberland Alms and Bobiks.  They were very, sort of, free form gigs and various ideas for songs came from the shows, including this one.  So this has been built from those kind of relaxed shows.

Is this a good indication of the sound of the album?

A little, yeah, the albums got a few trains of thought, some songs like ‘swim’ and ‘one step closer to the dawn’ have a similar type of style I guess and some came from messing about in new studios on new equipment and relying on other members of the team to hear something they liked and letting me know.  So yeah I think a lot of the album is quiet spontaneous and fresh.  Some of the work, and themes, also comes from my paintings.

The painting on the front cover of the single is fascinating – all of your art belongs to the same sort of creative approach?

Yes, very much, especially with the new album.  I always enjoy the puzzle of writing songs and the creative side of what I do.  Even on the single’s artwork there’s a little hidden message about another track on the album, ‘swim’, so it all fits together.  On this album there’s something less about perfection but more about feel which was really exciting, and that’s sometimes how I paint as well.  Capturing the heart of something, maybe rather than focusing on perfection or production, seems really interesting to me now.

So the album’s perhaps inspired by similar artists?

Yes, I really connected to the alt 90’s music I used to love and I also recorded some work on the island of Ireland and with some of the gear originally from Strawberry Studios so there’s moments which are quiet dark and heavy which maybe comes from that sort of Joy Division sound.  There’s also quiet a lot of guests on the album and they really helped create something new and interesting.

Are there plans to tour the album?

There are but we’re just waiting to make decisions on vinyl releases and tie that to when we can get out and play, but something around Autumn is very likely.  I’ll post it to my Instagram or Bandcamp as soon as we know more.

Duncan Lloyd’s “Laugh so Loud” is out now.