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Jul 14, 2021 By Mark Redfern

Manchester, England-based dance-rock band W.H. Lung are releasing a new album, Vanities, on September 3 via Melodic. Now they have shared its second single, “Showstopper,” which features softlizard and was shared via a video. Eve Louisa directed the video. Watch it below.

The band collectively had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Showstopper’ is about The Fear. It’s the day after the night before when you’ve let it all go or let yourself go large or let yourself get vulnerable, thinking, ‘Ah no what happened last night? What did I say?’ And yet the song does contain testimony of the beauty and transformation that can be found in a very good night out. Softlizard’s verse is saying, alright stop thinking so much, get up and dance.”

Previously W.H. Lung shared Vanities’ first single, “Pearl in the Palm,” via a video for it. “Pearl in the Palm” was one of our Songs of the Week.

Vanities is the band’s sophomore album, the follow-up to 2019’s Incidental Music. W.H. Lung’s main songwriters are Tom Sharkett and Joe Evans.

In a press release, Sharkett says that their hometown is integral to their sound. “Manchester is a very important part of this record,” he says. “The White Hotel, nights like Wet Play, seeing Gerd Janson DJ at the End of Year Riot (Electric Chair) and then discovering all the amazing stuff on his label Running Back. Then when we moved to Todmorden it was the same. Seeing Andrew Weatherall down the road from our flat at The Golden Lion—it just felt like an exciting time for us and I wanted to consume as much new music as possible.”

Evans says that the dancefloor is also an important component of the new album. “Vanities is a musical representation of what Tom and I crave the most now that it’s been taken away from us,” he says. “In simple terms, we love to dance and have both fallen deeper in love with the music that facilitates that. Because of this voracious appetite for new music and the experiences that come with that hunger, influences on the album are vast: the aforementioned Weatherall, Robyn, Todd Terje, Grauzone, Kelly Lee Owens, Helena Hauff and countless others.”

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