Photo by Courtney Sultan

Today, London’s Alberta Cross shared their seventh LP, Sinking Ships, will release on March 31 via Dark Matter / AMK. In celebration of the album announcement, the group released the second song from the project “Glow In The Dark,” which followed “Mercy,” which dropped in November.

The latest song made available from the upcoming collection follows it’s over all theme of mental health awareness and sonically interprets the internal feelings many struggle with and feel.

Of “Glow In The Dark,” Alberta Cross’ lead singer Petter Ericson Stakee said, “The ‘Circling’ chorus, when it finally drops, serves as a release to the darkness of the rest of the track – something or someone that serves as a way through life’s difficulties – a coping mechanism, good or bad. A way back out of our own battles that we often fight silently.”

The majority of Sinking Ships was written at The Wool Hall in Frome, Somerset, with Petter’s producer and longtime collaborator Luke Potashnick, who purchased and renovated the studio in recent days. In a press release, Potashnick added: “One of the main parts of the song came from Petter singing this high soaring melody at the top of one his vocal takes – before long, we re-enforced it with a cutting guitar and MS20 synth,” he said of the song. “Drums again were played by Tom the Lion – his parts weaving and repeating between the sections.  And Petter played my old Yacht Piano – which I found fitting considering the ‘lost at sea’ lyric.” 

The new project comes with visuals created by director Luis Velasco who shot on Super 8 cameras, and British painter Christopher Gee, according to a press release, has taken more time to fine-tune and curate than previous works.

“After everything the world has seen these past two years, the album took longer than we expected to record and release…the writing side of it actually came together quite quickly. But now that it is finally coming out, the timing actually feels serendipitous – the themes and lyrics of these songs do in fact reflect what’s going on in the world today,” said Petter. ‘Even though I wrote some of these tunes a while ago they strangely feel more relevant today than they did back then.”

Luke added, “I adore the feeling of this record – when writing together, Petter and I always end up somewhere on the same page – maybe it’s the Scandinavian in us, maybe it’s the life-stage we both share. I am particularly fond of ‘Mercy’ and ‘Sinking Ships.’ A lot of the landscape of these songs were set up back in a basement in Sweden… the main reason I single out these two songs is in how Petter’s voice soars on these recordings. I feel they are truly unique to Petter’s way of singing and I’m always very excited when we manage to capture that.” He continued to say, “The cover of Sharon Van Etten’s song is also a really special moment on the record for me.  I never know how I truly feel about covers on a record of otherwise original songs… But this song is just so good and again I’m really proud of this version.”

Since forming in nearly 20 years ago Alberta Cross have toured with the likes of Mumford & Sons, Portugal. The Man, Neil Young, Them Crooked Vultures (David Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones) and more. Petter will be promoting the new album in the United Kingdom and across Europe throughout 2023, with U.S. dates to come.

Listen to “Glow in The Dark” below.

Sinking Ships tracklist:
1) Mercy 
2) Sinking Ships 
3) Glow In The Dark 
4) Between You And Me ‘
5) Come To A Place 
6) Morning Drum 
7) Near Misses And Defeats 
8) Vespertine 
9) Bloom 
10) Every Time The Sun Comes Up