Wakefield's Long Division festival, taking place once more in June following 2014's slight change to September to mark the opening of the Unity Works venue, has made it's initial line-up announcement.

Early Bird tickets for the Saturday have apparently already sold out but at £25 the normal ones are hardly breaking the bank and what are the chances of seeing British Sea Power anywhere else for as little as Friday's £15?

Further details about this year's event can be found at the Long Division website here.

In Black And Gold finds Hey Colossus eight albums to the good and, for a change, taking things rather slow & quiet. Opening track ‘Hold On’ is all ethereal voices and synth noodling. On-hold music for when you put a call through to your local hippy funeral home maybe. Certainly worth listening to until you get to the head of the queue anyway.

About this point you could well expect something along the lines of ‘The Drang’ from the RRR album to pounce on you, now you’ve been cosseted for the past four minutes. The sampled crows at the start of ‘Sisters and Brothers’ certainly give hope of such a pounce but instead restraint is very much to the fore. The vocals are certainly of the frenzied sort but they’re miles back in the mix and the guitars nimbly stride over them. Headphones are probably required to get the best out of this number.

Those looking for more pace and something to frug to finally get what they want in ‘Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!’ – a pleasingly forthright and gutsy example of the band’s embodiment of the Stooges’ sound. From here on the album remains one of ups and downs as far as overall tempo is concerned, even shamanic at points.

There is variety aplenty here (seemingly more than on any other release in their decade+ existence) so if, like me, you’ve been only vaguely aware of the band and what they’ve been producing in that time this could very well be the best chance you’ve yet had to become enlightened and delve backwards into their work. Certainly the prospect of experiencing these and older songs live is one I’m sorry to be missing out on this time around but if any of the dates below work for you then I suggest you track down tickets:-

FEBRUARY

6^th                    Bristol                                 Exchange

7^th                    London                                Lexington

14^th                  Brighton                               Green Door

18^th                  Birmingham                          Flapper

19^th                  Newcastle                             Head of Steam

20^th                  Edinburgh                             Bannerman’s

21^st                  Nottingham                           Sona Studios

In Black And Gold is available from amazon and iTunes.