GUV (the long-running, ever-changing, and reliably fantastic project of songwriter extraordinaire, Ben Cook) is releasing his new album, Warmer Than Gold, this Friday January 30th via Run For Cover Records. Today he’s sharing one more early single, the punchy shoegaze of “Blue Jade.”
Warmer Than Gold evolves Cook’s hooky guitar pop in new directions. Earlier singles “Warmer Than Gold” and “Let Your Hands Go” leaned into danceable beats, “Chasin’ Luv” was a dose of C86 jangle, and now “Blue Jade” smears GUV’s hummable melodies with layers of old school shoegaze shine.
Cook discussed the track saying: “For this song, we were thinking about these last few years of the shoegaze wave alongside classic records by MBV and Chapterhouse, but with the aim of pushing it somewhere punk and more driving. The idea was to make it like a Blitz or Oi! record but bury it under a wall of guitars and texture. Most of the vocal melodies came together while the guitars were being tracked, quietly singing them into my phone. I took the instrumentals from the sessions at Max Epstein’s studio in LA back to London and recorded the vocals quickly in my uncle’s apartment, keeping it low so I wouldn’t disturb the neighbours.”
Warmer Than Gold was made with the help of an all-star cast of creatives, including contributions from James Matthew Seven, Darcy Baylis, Hatchie, Meg Mills of Turnstile, and many more. It’s a record of unstoppable musical motion, effortlessly blending elements of Britpop, baggy, classic indie pop, and first wave shoegaze through Cook’s unique lens. The result is an album that feels in conversation with the entirety of his musical journey—a set of songs whose roots go all the way back to his childhood growing up in between Toronto and England, and travel through his prolific years as Young Guv (“I’m not so young anymore, three letter band names are cool, and I’m tired of being mistaken as a rapper,” he says of the name adjustment), arriving in the present with perhaps the best work of his career.
Thoughts Words Action 