Leeds Beckett Students' Union, Leeds
Wunderhorse announce their biggest UK & Ireland tour to date for autumn 2024, following news of forthcoming album, Midas, arriving on 30th August via Communion.
Recorded at Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studio (birthplace of Nirvana’s In Utero & PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me) with producer Craig Silvey (The Rolling Stones, The National, Florence + the Machine), Midas is the band’s second LP, following 2022’s debut Cub.
Midas adopts an unpolished recording process which captures the visceral atmosphere of Wunderhorse’s lauded live performances. Frontman Jacob Slater explains:
“When we first went into the studio to make this record, the only thing we were sure about is how we wanted it to sound; very imperfect, very live, very raw; no frills,” Slater says of the new album. “We wanted it to sound like your face is pressed up against the amplifiers, like you've been locked inside the bass drum.”
This autumn, the band’s headline shows will see them step into bigger, iconic venues, which include a stop at London’s Brixton Academy.
Debut album Cub has taken on a life of its own in the 18 months since release, with sprawling, psychedelic numbers and sharp grunge refrains alike igniting Wunderhorse’s ever-growing audience. Cub’s campaign and the months following have seen the four-piece graduate from playing in basements and pubs to filling Glastonbury’s Woodsies tent and selling out Kentish Town’s O2 Forum months in advance.
Across the mammoth tour leading up to and following Cub’s release, Slater and his bandmates – guitarist Harry Fowler, drummer Jamie Staples and bassist Peter Woodin – gradually and naturally became a fully-formed band, and left the solo era of Wunderhorse behind.
As their crowds have grown exponentially in both scale and ardency, and Cub’s tracks have reached the status of cultural reference points within the younger contingents of their fanbase, it seems harder than ever to recall a time when frontman Jacob Slater believed that his career was over before his twenties had even begun.
Having burned himself out as the teenage frontman of the much-hyped but ultimately ill-fated punk outfit Dead Pretties, Jacob retired to Cornwall to repair the damage that he had caused himself.
It was whilst working as a surf instructor on the UK’s south western perimeter that Jacob rekindled his love of songwriting: this time spinning introspective, considered compositions which transcended his younger years and went on to form the foundations of Wunderhorse.
The week prior to Midas’ release will see Wunderhorse take to the stage at Reading + Leeds, following a co-headline spot at Dot to Dot festival alongside Mercury-nominated duo Jockstrap.
Wunderhorse
Leeds Beckett Students' Union, Portland Building, Portland Way, Leeds, Leeds LS1 3HE