‘If music be the food of love, play on...’ Shakespeare sagely suggested in The Twelfth Night, though he inadvertently encapsulated a second universal truth with his epigram, for the reverse is possibly even more accurate. Love is the food of music. Evoking exquisite joy and soul-crushing anguish – along with all the yearning, hoping, doubt and certainty in between – this elemental human force has fuelled an expansive canon of songs, tracks and tunes for centuries.
For James de Graef it is the fundamental building block of his artistic expression, as his stage name and debut album title explicitly attest. Yet while Lovesongs by Loverman will leave the listener in no doubt that love is all, the emotional embers at the heart of each of the record’s 11 songs – and the warm, intimate and candid atmosphere that pervades across them – also ensure that all of love is here to be experienced.
"It's been informed not only by heartbreak but by love in its different shapes, forms and exchanges,” the Anglo-Belgian singer-songwriter and producer explains of the melancholic yet hopeful core at the heart of Lovesongs. “Heartbreak is the base, but the record is just as much capturing the joy and the energy you get from communing with your loved ones and your friends in celebratory ecstasy, or the love you feel for humans in general. People you might have never met, but when you see expressions of their tenderness and understanding through everyday, simple acts, it invokes moments of real beauty. The record touches that spirit of love too."
Listen to Lovesongs: loverman.ffm.to/lovesongs
Live:
31.10.2023 — L'AERONEF, LILLE
16.11.2023 — [PIAS] NITES @ NOUVEAU CASINO, PARIS
23.11.2023 — CONCERTZAAK, MECHELEN
28.11.2023 — AB CLUB, BRUSSELS SOLD OUT
29.11.2023 — AB CLUB, BRUSSELS EXTRA SHOW
07.12.2023 — DE CASINO, SINT-NIKLAAS
14.12.2023 — CACTUS CLUB, BRUGGE
20.12.2023 — TRIX, ANTWERP
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