CLOCKWORKS - Exit Strategy

After an extensive tour of the UK at the end of 2022, the band decided to head into the studio to record their first longform offering. Following a passion for storytelling, they pulled together influences from Pulp Fiction to Fleabag, from Zadie Smith toEdward Hopper. They wrote relentlessly during 2022, diligently crafting what was to become this debut album. Released independentlyon their own Life and Times Recordings, Exit Strategy is a 13-track labour of love, recorded at Abbey Road Studios and Love Electric,enlisting the production smarts of Bernard Butler. The album is in two halves (divided literally by the two sides of the vinyl edition)entitled Galway and London and presents a multifaceted band, pushing themselves and exploring the limits of their philosophy.Exit Strategy centres around a protagonist who moves from Galway to London in search of meaning, certain that, as the main characterin the film of his own life, the solution lies in changing his surroundings and acting as someone he's not. Both a mirror and a portal,the album promises encounters with manipulative bosses, evil ad agencies, a broken pact to flee to Australia, run-ins with the law,cheating boyfriends, drug fuelled youths, heartache, paranoia, social media anxiety and a drunk singer dressed as Jesus. Thematicallythe album races between emotions, between irony and sincerity, between soul searching and tongue-in-cheek finger pointing and endswhere it all started, both musically and in terms of single rollout, with the nostalgic/euphoric first single Westway.Explaining the album's genesis and cinematic influence, James McGregor says: "We were always sure we wanted the album to begreater than the sum of its parts, so decided to create the world of a film, entitled Exit Strategy. We envisaged the record as a seriesof snapshots, telling the story of a group of characters trying to navigate through life." Hallmarked more by a philosophy than a sound, The Clockworks weave pop sensibilities with noisy, post-punk, rock-influenced stylings.The songs seem swaggering and dark yet often have an epic, nostalgic quality. They sit poetic introspection beside witty, kitchen sinkdrama to create something intense but playful.With the release of Exit Strategy, The Clockworks have created a world to be explored, to be analysed and to be deciphered, but mostimportantly to be felt.

Vinyl release of Clockworks - Exit Strategy. Released through LIFE AND TIMES RECORDINGS and available on LP.