VELVET THUNDER

This is proper, “grown-up” rock music of real class and nuance. For me this band has thrown off the shackles of the past and revealed a new level of song-writing, an altogether mightier future!

On their sixteenth studio album, Far And Wide, released 9th October via InsideOutMusic, The Pineapple Thief feel more like a rock band than they have for quite a long time – and this is a Very Good Thing! Still progressive. Still great at conjuring a spine-tingling atmosphere. Still attuned to the strange, troubled world around us. I can’t believe it’s now a decade and seven albums since from the arrival of Gavin Harrison on drums and, newly signed to InsideOut Records, I’m very happy to say that, for me, they’ve recaptured their chemistry of old. This album is the sound of a group with dreamlike complexity at their fingertips, channelling it into hard-hitting, incisive songs.

Far And Wide has a powerful, immersive track-list. You’ll find vignettes of a society in turmoil here. Moral courage in the face of adversity. Personal loss and its ripples. Points that intensify the foundations laid by 2024’s It Leads To This, in which the band contemplated all that the next generation stand to inherit. In May 2025, after completing successful shows in South America, the band were considering their next steps, group discussions for a new record got underway, and Harrison’s home studio in North London provided the freshness for new material, their first session producing three singles. It was a collaborative process, perhaps more so than ever, with four songs stemming from instrumental pieces by keyboardist Steve Kitch (who, as usual, also mastered the album), while Jon Sykes composed basslines. Soord and Harrison discovered instant, interactive feedback by writing together, sparking ideas off each other that they realised didn’t sound like anything either of them would write individually.

At that time, Bruce’s father was spending his final months in hospital, and as a writer he was strongly impacted by a combination of the voices heard in those corridors (with notes of death creeping into his warm yet crystalline vocals) and the constant headlines from a world in turmoil. It’s certainly not a light-hearted record! In a Pineapple Thief first, there are no acoustic guitars; Far And Wide’s gauzy, softened textures come through breathing space, deft rhythmic choices, atmospheric keyboards – all of which accentuate the impact of Soord’s electric guitar parts.

There’s a live, “real-time heat” in this song-set, from the moody, edgy tones of opener New World Order, the music punches hard – all teeth and commanding shadows, without sacrificing the subtle twists and lightnesses that come to them so naturally. This first song describes the rise of mindless, extremist movements everywhere…”everywhere you look, they’re moving in the shadows, just obeying orders”…..

Hold The Ashes was the punchy first single, darkly pointing to our mortality, and the legacies we leave behind. There’s an almost Metal riff ringing through it, driven by staccato percussion and bassline. The mental image of Bruce as a singer/songwriter includes an acoustic guitar welded to his hip, so the haunting, edgy moodiness he generates from his electric strings here is a revelation!

Still Living is a gentle, elegiac number that I imagine to be Bruce’s father’s final thoughts? As I said earlier, the band’s trademark use of space and clarity, soft textures and atmospheric rhythms really emphasise the luscious lead guitar work on here. It’s as though Bruce himself is finally reconciled to the fact that he is a half-decent rock guitarist, positively encouraged by the rest of the band. As a result, there’s quite a few guitar solos on this record, which is not something traditionally you expect from TPT (and I have to say, hugely enriches the final product!)

God Knows is another fine example of this, there’s a sense of grungy, almost industrial aggression here, the slightly distorted vocals adding a gloriously heavy nod to buried indiscretions resurfacing, as people reassess their past – “and god knows, the ghosts are finding ways of getting out”…. This track nicely captures the energy of a band still excited to write music, even as they wrestle with life’s conflicts, and the mercurial nature of creativity itself.

This Empty Space beautifully renders a sense of melancholia and angst, early fuzzed guitar work giving way to the band’s trademark deftly sparse arrangement, but punctuated by a sweet lead solo. The lyrics are achingly poignant for what has gone, and a reflection on those left behind…..and yet the music is curiously uplifting in its melody, and the gradual building towards the end. Lovely.

Scattering Like Flies is another track to benefit from Soord’s new-found confidence in fretwork – catch his searing solo at the peak of this one. Even the quiet parts are underlaid by a juicy yet restrained guitar line, it simply gives the band an extra dimension that I found “completes the picture” compared to previous, sometimes “too thin” (imho) efforts. By doing this, it reinforces the variety the band inject through their intricate cahnges of tone and percussive effect. The extra “hard edge” this gives the composition as it reaches a conclusion is clearly evident. Through The Noise feels like a companion piece to Scattering….taken together, the two seem (to me) to eloquently describe the mindless torching of peoples’ (refugees?) homes, or the impact of Putin’s “Special Operation”. Lyrically these are quietly devastating, but the darkness is tempered by hope, soaring through a harmonised image of togetherness: “we were sat on the edge of the cliff that night / we could see our home”. And musically, there’s more sustained lead guitar, I’m mightily impressed.

Who Wants It could be Muse, with its metallic vocals underpinned by electronica. But there’s that trademark tension created by Gavin Harrison’s punctuation, and the collective creation that holds tunefulness within another staccato, modern piece of rock music. The pace quickens, another solo is launched – where has this guitarist been hiding all these years?!

No Exceptions is the last and longest track on the record, starting as a classic TPT slow number. But straight away, Bruce’s electric guitar adds something that is at once traditional blues and modern atmospheric rock. It doesn’t slap you in the face, it’s all tastefully restrained, but you know that extra dimension is there. Lyrically this feels like a message of reconcilation with the memory of his father, of hope for a collective future where good sense eventtually prevails despite everything, the arrangement developing powerfully.

At its heart, Far And Wide is about shared ground. An abstract collection of feelings about the state of the world, tapping into human experiences in ways that perhaps only music can.

“We are sharing our deepest fears about the world,” Soord concludes, “but also the fact that we’re all in it together. What I’m singing about is probably what everybody else is thinking. Like, ‘what’s going on?’ ‘Why is this happening?’ ‘What’s going to happen to my loved ones?’ If we can connect on that level, that’s when it works.” And he’s so right – this is proper, “grown-up” rock music of real class and nuance. For me this band has thrown off the shackles of the past and revealed a new level of song-writing, an altogether mightier future!

So good, you get two!

By The way, the band recently announced a UK & European headline tour for 2027. See the full list of dates below:

4^th March – The Garage, Glasgow, UK

5^th March – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, UK

6^th March – O2 Academy, Sheffield, UK

7^th March – The 1865, Southampton, UK

9^th March – Antipode, Rennes, France

10^th March – Metronum, Toulouse, France

12^th March – Sala Apolo, Barcelona, Spain

13^th March – Teatro Eslava, Madrid, Spain

14^th March – Republica de Musica, Lisbon, Portugal

16^th March – Casa de Musica, Porto, Portugal

17^th March – Santana 27, Bilbao, Spain

19^th March – La Rayonne, Lyon, France

20^th March – Le Trianon, Paris, France

21^st March – Rockhal, Esc-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

1^st April – Batschkapp, Frankfurt, Germany

2^nd April – Markthalle, Hamburg, Germany

3^rd April – Carlswerk Victoria, Cologne, Germany

4^th April – Metropol, Berlin, Germany

6^th April – Stary Manez, Gdansk, Poland

7^th April – Palladium, Warsaw, Poland

9^th April – Klub Studio, Krakow, Poland

10^th April – Alter Schlachthof, Dresden, Germany

11^th April – Roxy Hall, Prague, Czech Republic

13^th April – W.U.K., Vienna, Austria

14^th April – Muffathalle, Munich, Germany

15^th April – Boogaloo, Zagreb, Croatia

17^th April – Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, Italy

18^th April – Alcatraz, Milan, Italy

20^th April – Dynamo, Zurich, Switzerland

22^nd April – La Laiterie, Strasbourg, France

23^rd April – La Madeleine, Brussels, Belgium

24^th April – O13, Tilburg, Netherlands

21^st May – Posten, Odense, Denmark

22^nd May – Amager Bio, Copenhagen, Denmark

23^rd May – Train, Aarhus, Denmark

25^th May – USF Sardinen, Bergen, Norway

26^th May – Rockefeller, Oslo, Norway

28^th May – Pustervik, Gothenburg, Sweden

29^th May – Nya Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden

31^st May – Logomo Teatro, Turku, Finland

1^st June – Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland

2^nd June -Tavara-Asema, Tampere, Finland 

The band will also hit the road in North America in November 2026. Find the full list of upcoming shows here: https://www.pineapplethief.com/tour/