Johnny Marr: Fever Dreams Pt 2 EP – review

Johnny Marr: Fever Dreams Pt 2 EP

(New Voodoo / BMG)

Vinyl / DL / Streaming

Out Now

Johnny Marr has released the Fever Dreams Pt 2 EP featuring four new tracks that make up the second quarter of his eagerly awaited double album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 which is due February 25th 2022.

Following on from October’s quartet of Spirit Power and Soul; Receiver; All These Dreams and Ariel this new release includes Lightning People and Hideaway Girl alongside the previous released Tenement Time and Sensory Street. All tracks again written by Marr and long time collaborator James Doviak (guitar, keyboards and backing vocals)

The opening track is a call to arms which builds slowly with the artist delivering one of his smoothest and confident vocal performances; it also features bass and backing vocals from Primal Scream’s Simone Butler. Of Lightning People Marr says, “I wanted to pay tribute, in a way, to people who are interested in me, and listen to me. Even if it’s just for the five minutes of people listening to the song, to galvanise this idea of ‘us’. I deliberately used the language of soul music: “Bring it all my brothers. Bring it all my lovers. Be the Lightning People. Just like we’ll always be. It’s Glam Gospel.”

Hideaway Girl will be familiar to those who saw Manchester’s favourite guitarist on his solo tour or live stream as it opened the sets. It’s a powerful driving track that grabs you from the off. Sensory Street follows on from the previous released electro-soul album opener Spirit, Power and Soul’s. It’s a startling track with strident electronics the artist describes as, “the story of a surreal 48 hours in subterranean England”.

With Tenement Time Marr fondly looks back at his experiences growing up in the inner city, “running around being quite wild,” this led him to the idea of the hook, ‘forever, forever is mine.’ He says “it’s about running around Ardwick, bunking into warehouses and getting chased. That was the first time I was self-consciously into culture: around people who wore certain clothes, and it was part of being a little Manchester boy, really. I have a real romanticism about that period of my life.” It’s got ‘indie classic’ written all over it with a chorus you can already hear the crowd chanting along with.

With the first half of the album now available it’s shaping up to be the best of his solo career to date. Certainly as we emerge from the shit-show of the last couple of years it would appear Marr has used his time wisely. As well as the the full album to look forward to in February he’ll be making the most (hopefully!) of things opening up by joining Blondie as their special guest on their ‘Against The Odds’ headline tour through April and May before heading out on The Killers’ headline US arena tour, beginning in August through to October 2022.

UK Tour Dates (with Blondie)

April 2022
Fri 22 The SSE Hydro Glasgow
Sat 24 Motorpoint Arena Cardiff
Tues 26 The O2 Arena London
Thurs 28 The Brighton Centre
Fri 29 Bonus Arena Hull

May 2022
Sun 1 AO Arena Manchester
Mon 2 Liverpool M&S Bank Arena
Wed 4 First Direct Arena Leeds
Thurs 5 Motorpoint Arena Nottingham
Sat 7 Birmingham Utilita Arena

Johnny Marr can be found at his Official site, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

All words by Iain Key. See his Author Profile here author’s archive or on Twitter as @iainkey.

Source: louderthanwar.com