Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth detail collaborative album Utopian Ashes

Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth have drawn on the classic country duet tradition of artists such as Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth are exploring ‘the loss, miscommunication and emotional inarticulacy’ of a married couple whose relationship is breaking down on their first album Utopian Ashes.

“In the same way you create characters for a novel, we’ve created characters here,” Beth explains.

“But you put yourself in it, because you’re trying to understand the human situation. The singing has to be authentic. That’s all that matters.”

“When you write a song you marry the personal with the fictional and make art,” Gillespie adds. “I was thinking about two people living alone, together but apart, existing and suffering in a psychic malaise, who plough on because of responsibilities and commitments.”

“It’s about the impermanence of everything — an existential fact that everyone has to face at some point in their lives.”

Out on July 2nd six years after Gillespie and Beth’s occasional collaborations began, the LP is being previewed with Remember We Were Lovers.

Utopian Ashes tracklist:

Chase It Down
English Town
Remember We Were Lovers
You Heart Will Always Be Broken
Stones of Silence
You Don’t Know What Love Is
Self-Crowned King of Nothingness
You Can Trust Me Now
Living A Lie
Sunk In Reverie