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. Fans got a taste of the new material last month with the first track ‘1933’ and this is followed today by new track (and title track) ‘Be More Kind’ which is available now. Of the track, Frank says, “Be More Kind”, the song, is at the heart of the album, both lyrically and musically; when I finished it I could see the rest of the album coming together around it.’’

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.”

Now he just has to work out how they are going to play them live. The Be More Kind World Tour will begin in April, with its first leg playing to over 200,000 people across the UK, the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, taking them through to Christmas. Turner promises that 2019 will include visits to some “slightly more weird and wonderful places.” “My days of being engaged in an arms race to be the hardest touring musician in the universe are behind me now,” he says. “We’re going to tour hard but come home regularly in the middle of it.” The first batch of announcements covers 120 dates. Some old habits die hard. These are songs that demand to be heard and Frank Turner is packed and ready to go.

BE MORE KIND TOUR - UK & IRELAND DATES:

APRIL

13th Manchester, Academy SOLD OUT

15th Dublin, The Academy

18th Belfast, The Limelight

20th Aberdeen, The Garage SOLD OUT

21st Edinburgh, Liquid Room SOLD OUT

22nd Newcastle, O2 Academy

24th Sheffield, O2 Academy         

25th Liverpool, O2 Academy SOLD OUT

27th Bristol, O2 Academy SOLD OUT

28th Exeter Uni, Great Hall

30th Cambridge. Corn Exchange

MAY

1st Southampton, Guildhall SOLD OUT

2nd Southend, Cliffs Pavilion

4thLeicester, O2 Academy SOLD OUT

5th Oxford, O2 Academy SOLD OUT

8th Hull, City Hall

9th Norwich, UEA

11th London, Roundhouse, SOLD OUT

12thLondon, Roundhouse, SOLD OUT

13thLondon, Roundhouse, SOLD OUT

14th London, Roundhouse, SOLD OUT

Prep have confirmed release details for new EP, Cold Fire, due in April, the follow-up to their debut EP release, 2016’s Futures. Cold Fire captures the London-based four piece making good on the buzz surrounding Futures, with an impressive string of collaborators, including Kaytranada associates Pomo (who’s production work featured on Anderson .Paak’s ‘Malibu’) and fast-rising, Kitsuné-signed Portland singer Reeva De Vito. The EP’s taut, immersive title track also features a co-vocal from Korean megastar Dean, a driving force behind PREP’s own hothoused success in Asia, where gigs are more-often-than-not the scene of hundreds of people, phones aloft, singing every word of the Futures EP.

Pacey new single ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ finds Prep stepping up from Futures in more literal senses also, shedding some of the woozier grooves of their debut in favour of an irresistibly brisk BPM, buoyed along by crisp handclaps beneath the nervy energy of frontman Tom Havelock’s vocal.

Prep came about as a placeholder alias for four artists with an eye-watering list of credits under their belts. Co-writer and keyboard player Llywelyn Ap Myrddin - a classical & opera composer with a predilection for electronica - began working up instrumentals with drummer Guillaume Jambel, who - under the GIOM moniker - has headlined Fabric, collaborated with Defected Records and is touring with George Fitzgerald.

Llywelyn was completely thrown by the response to some of these tracks from Grammy nominee Dan Radclyffe, noted for his work on recordings by Drake and AlunaGeorge. “I played him this instrumental, and Dan said, ‘Well that’s quite Yacht Rock, isn’t it?’ And I was like ‘What on earth is Yacht Rock?’” Sensing nonetheless the foundations of a shared musical DNA, Myrddin, Jambel and Radclyffe began to dedicate serious moonlight hours to the new joint venture. Prep’s line-up was quickly solidified by Havelock (friendly with Radclyffe from co-writing for the likes of Riton, Sinead Hartnett and Ray BLK), who’s effortless falsetto was immediately apparent as the perfect foil to the band’s airtight grooves.