Much-loved independent label Xtra Mile Recordings have today released the first ever instalment of their new podcast series, The Xtra Yard, featuring their various label signings in conversation. This first episode features label mates - and long-standing friends - Frank Turner, Will Varley and Beans on Toast (Jay McAllister) chewing the fat on everything from Townes Van Zandt and learning to drive, to what it means to be British and just how far they’d go to secure a support slot for Bruce Springsteen.

The Xtra Yard also captures the three of them recollecting the first time they met each other – hilarious stories including Frank meeting Jay on Holloway Road and hanging out at the Nambucca pub in London; Jay meeting Will three times before remembering who he was and finally Jay introducing Frank to Will at a gig at the Monarch in Camden. The three have remained good friends, touring buddies and label mates ever since.

The Xtra Yard podcast arrives at a busy time for all three artists. Varley releases his new album, Spirit Of Minnie, on February 9 the same day he headlines London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Frank Turner has just announced details of his forthcoming seventh album, Be More Kind, which is out May 4 and world tour of 120 dates this year, and Beans On Toast released his ninth album, Cushty, in December and has just announced details of his first book, vinyl release of his debut album and a tour in May. Tracks from all their new studio albums also feature within the podcast.

Recorded in Jay’s own living room, you can stream the episode via Spotify – listen here

Frank Turner has announced details of his forthcoming seventh studio album. Be More Kind will be released on May 4 through Xtra Mile Recordings/Polydor Records. Months after the release of Songbook, a career-spanning retrospective which also saw reworked versions of tracks from across the past decade, Be More Kind represents a thematic and sonic line in the sand for the 36-year-old. It’s a record that combines universal anthems with raw emotion and the political and the personal, with the intricate folk and punk roar trademarks of Turner’s sound imbued with new, bold experimental shades. Be More Kind has been produced by Austin Jenkins and Joshua Block, formerly of psychedelic-rock Texans White Denim, and Florence And The Machine and Halsey collaborator Charlie Hugall. “I wanted to try and get out of my comfort zone and do something different,” says Turner.

Turner was halfway through writing a very different sort of album, a concept record about women from the historical record who had been ignored, when he was reading a collection of Clive James’ poetry and one particular line compelled him to re-think his direction. It was from a poem called Leçons Des Ténèbres: “I should have been more kind. It is my fate. To find this out, but find it out too late.” “It devastated me the first time I read it,” he says. “A lot of older, wiser people tend to say things like that, that the things that come out in the wash at the end of a human life are the way you treated the people around you. In the modern world, that’s a lesson that all of us, myself included could do to learn.”

Turner and his band, the Sleeping Souls, were on tour in the USA in 2016 “when the world decided to go collectively nuts” and the songs that make up Be More Kind started to come together. “Somewhere in the record, there’s a convergence of the ideas of personal and political, which is a central theme of the album,” Turner says. One of the driving themes of the album is empathy, even for your enemy. “You should at least be able to inhabit the mental universe of the people you disagree with. If you can’t do that, then how do you communicate with people other than through force of arms, which is something we all agree is a bad idea.” Behind some of the best songs of Turner’s career is the idea that the human race needs to find better ways of disagreeing than screaming each other down. Turner’s last two records, 2013’s Tape Deck Heart and 2015’s Positive Songs For Negative People, dealt with the fallout from a break-up and saw Turner struggling to cover the cracks in his personal life. Now happily in a relationship and living with his partner and their cat, he again set his sights to the bigger picture.

After the stripped-down, live-sounding Positive Songs…, Turner wanted to try a new approach for the record. Originally, he contacted Jenkins and Block at their Niles City Sound studio in Fort Worth, Texas with the idea of recording a white soul album in the vein of Dexys Midnight Runners. He found they were equally enthusiastic when he changed his mind and decided he wanted to record a more rock-led album with tints of electronic-pop. “I have an obscure corner of my music taste where I’m into glitch electronic music and Warp Records,” says Turner. “It’s not an electronic record but I got into arpeggiator synths.” Positive Songs… was cut in nine, intense days whereas Be More Kind was made over a period of seven months, giving Turner the opportunity to turn songs on their head, try different versions and shake up the dynamics within his band.

BE MORE KIND TOUR - UK & IRELAND DATES:

APRIL

13th        Manchester        Academy

15th        Dublin               The Academy

18th        Belfast        The Limelight

20th        Aberdeen        The Garage

21st        Edinburgh        Liquid Room

22nd       Newcastle        O2 Academy

24th       Sheffield        O2 Academy      

25th       Liverpool        O2 Academy

27th       Bristol               O2 Academy

28th       Exeter Uni        Great Hall

30th       Cambridge        Corn Exchange

MAY

1st        Southampton        Guildhall 01/05/2018

2nd        Southend Cliffs Pavilion 02/05/2018

4th        Leicester        O2 Academy 04/05/2018

5th       Oxford        O2 Academy 05/05/2018

8th        Hull               City Hall

9th        Norwich        UEA

Tickets go on sale on Friday 2nd Feb at 10.00am and are available from here