VMS LIVE PRESENTS
James Allan has a philosophy he applies to everything Glasvegas do: “If you follow your heart
and your instincts, it might be difficult and you’ll trip yourself up at times - but usually, it
works out.” With the band’s triumphant fourth album Godspeed, released on April 2021 on
their own label Go Wow Records, he put that maxim to the test, not only by choosing to
produce and engineer the record himself, but also going through the psychological toll of
“hundreds of nights up late, thinking about the person I am, the thoughts I feel, reasons why
I feel them. Making this album has probably made me understand myself a bit better as a
person, to be honest. And it’s the hardest I’ve ever worked on anything in my life.”
So while the seven-year gap between Godspeed and 2013’s Later... When the TV Turns to
Static might now seem “scary years ago,” for James, its long gestation period doesn’t feel
entirely unjustified. “I have this kind of oblivious nature about what’s achievable for myself,”
he admits. “Whatever I was before this album, I didn’t feel that was going to be enough
somehow. So the timeframe felt natural for me. It makes sense.” Allan began work on
Godspeed in 2014 when he was living in Sweden, and finished it in lockdown in his
spare-room studio in Glasgow’s east end. While the songs and arrangements haven’t changed
much from those early days, his own life certainly did - and the more time he spent working
on the album, the more its themes and characters seemed to coalesce into an unexpected
narrative.
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