RAZORLIGHT’s Johnny Borrell has announced the indie band is back with new music.
He revealed a new album and single are on the way, telling fans: “You can’t just be your own tribute band”.
News of the record comes as they revealed a 20th anniversary gig of debut album Up All Night at the O2 Academy Brixton on November 21.
Frontman Johnny announced upcoming album Planet Nowhere has ten tracks and its first single offering is Scared Of Nothing.
Johnny told The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X: “This is the first thing we’ve done with all of us the first full album since 2008 / 2009.
“I really didn’t think we’d do another one.”
Razorlight’s self-titled second album went to No1 in 2006 and they had a high-charting follow-up in 2008 when they were the darlings of the indie scene.
But a year later, band drummer Andy Burrows quit the group following a falling out with Johnny.
After a five-year hiatus, Razorlight reunited in 2018 — with new member David Kaplan – to release fourth album Olympus Sleeping, but it peaked at a disappointing No 27.
The band headed to Spain to write new music, but it wasn’t guaranteed that they’d release a record.
“We got back together,” Johnny told Moyles.
“We had to do this Greatest Hits – we had this contractual obligation, which I really hated doing – and you know, I said to the guys, ‘Let’s go to Spain, let’s go and record with (producer and musician) Youth.’
“Youth just seemed to get the band in a very uncomplicated way, and I was like, ‘Let’s see if we get something good’ and we went out there, and it was sort of like a movie.
“On the last day, we just kind of found something. But I said to the guys before we went out, ‘If we don’t find something, if we don’t end up something that we really love and we want to do so we are moving forward as a band and making new music, we’ve just got to pack it in.
“Because you can’t just, sort of, be your own tribute act, you know, to be mean. And that’s what we did.”
Andy spoke about falling out with Johnny in 2019.
The full tracklist for Razorlight's Planet Nowhere
Zombie Love
U Can Call Me
Taylor Swift = US Soft Propaganda
Dirty Luck
Scared of Nothing
F.O.B.F.
Empire Service
Cyclops
Cool People
April Ends
He admitted he quit the group as he couldn’t cope with the tempestuous frontman and said he didn’t believe he’d ever return to the band.
He said the pair had an awkward encounter in 2016 when they accidentally bumped into each other in the street.
He said: “It really affected me because I hadn’t seen him for like, five years.
“It was so weird running into him and him acting like he didn’t care. Very odd.
“He acted like I was a stranger, it was the weirdest thing.
“I think I went off and got extremely drunk, but felt very weird for a couple of days… it was almost like seeing a ghost.”
