DJANGO DJANGO

Reveal New Single "Dirty Hotel Blues"

from Forthcoming Album Doveland

out November 6th 

Listen to "Dirty Hotel Blues" HERE

Began as late-night piano idea between

Dave & brother John from The Beta Band...

"Dirty Hotel Blues," the second single to be taken from their forthcoming sixth studio album, Doveland, due for release on November 6 via Clouds Hill. Following the introspective first single "Cameos," "Dirty Hotel Blues" showcases another side of the record's richly imagined world. 

The origins of "Dirty Hotel Blues" stretch back several years and was influenced by Dave Maclean’s memories of early US tours and his own teenaged road trip across America. What began as a late-night piano idea between Dave and his brother John from The Beta Band, gradually evolved through improvisation before eventually finding its place on Doveland.

"This track was kicking around for a long time,” explains Dave. “My brother John wrote the piano part in his house during lockdown and was playing it to me one night and I said, 'Let's do something with that.' I looped a beat from an old breaks record and me and John and Vinny jammed it into a song but it sat around for a while until one day I had an idea for the chorus lyrics and the theme of the track, so we took it to the album sessions in Germany and worked on it there."

Produced during extended sessions in the German countryside alongside Nick McCarthy (Franz Ferdinand) and composer-producer Polly Ester, Doveland marks Django Django's most cohesive and emotionally resonant album to date. 

The album takes its title from an online urban myth of a supposedly vanished midwest town called Doveland. Some believe they once lived there and even possess souvenirs as proof, yet Doveland appears on no maps. Explanations range from sinkholes to military experiments to collective amnesia. Most likely, the town never existed at all. While the mysterious settlement is not the direct subject of the album, the idea of searching for an impossible place became the catalyst for the record. 

These 12 tracks are also grounded in the lives of those who wrote them, in some of their most challenging experiences. During the years working on Doveland, Maclean lost his older sister, and Dixon lost his father.

A band celebrated for their boundless invention and a curiosity that has defined them since their Mercury Prize-nominated debut, Django Django have spent more than a decade pushing their sound into unexpected territory. With Doveland, they channel that adventurousness into their most focused statement yet. Dave Mclean offers; “It’s taken me until the age of 46 for us to make a ‘grown-up’ record. 

Django Django are:

Dave Maclean, Jim Dixon, Vincent Neff, Tommy Grace

The album artwork is a collaboration with mother and daughter mudlarking team Northern Mudlarks (https://www.instagram.com/northernmudlarks/ ). It consists of historical artifacts found by the pair along river banks in the Scottish borders, then curated into collections.

Live dates

13th August, Color Festival, Italy

30th August supporting Scissor Sisters, Queen's Park Recreation Ground, Glasgow, UK

Django Django Socials:

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