News

Switchfoot Release Album Details

• 22nd Apr 2010

Switchfoot are set to release ‘Hello Hurricane’ on May 3 through Atlantic Records. Recorded with producer/bassist Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Rilo Kiley, Eminem, and Pink), ‘Hello Hurricane’ is Switchfoot’s seventh full-length album and their first on Atlantic Records.

Released late last year in the US the album debuted in the Top 15 on The Billboard 200 and has already sold over 150,000 copies. The band have also confirmed a date at London’s Forum on Tuesday June 1.

‘Hello Hurricane’ – which documents life’s storms while managing to find an element of hope in them – has received a flurry of fantastic reviews in the US. The band were featured in a Rolling Stone “In The Studio” piece, the album was a ‘Critic’s Pick’ in USA Today’s Fall Music feature, and the band also graced the cover of Relevant Magazine. “On ‘Needle and Haystack Life’, singer Jon Foreman works his breathy croon over surging pop-punk guitars, whilst ‘The Sound’ has a brutish, heavy-metal vibe. ‘Enough’ “rides a percolating art-folk groove” said Billboard, while Alternative Press declared the album’s title track as “an uplifting, hope-giving affirmation of resurgence”.

Hailing from San Diego, CA. Switchfoot are: Jon Foreman (vocals, guitar) Tim Foreman (bass guitar, backing vocals), Chad Butler (drums, percussion), Jerome Fontamillas (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), and Drew Shirley (guitar). The band got their start in 1996 when the Foreman brothers and Butler came together around a mutual love of surfing and a passion for rock music, spurred by such personal Southern California guitar heroes as Rocket FromThe Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Boilermaker and Three Mile Pilot. “Growing up in San Diego, my heroes were the bands that had sold maybe 30,000 records,” says Jon “I’d never seen U2, so those were the bands that gave me my perspective of what a big rock show was. There was a feeling of camaraderie in San Diego that afforded us the freedom in those early days to try anything – even if it meant failing. I don’t think we’d be the band that we are today if we’d started in LA”.

Having already sold over 5 million albums and with a Grammy Nomination in the bag, Switchfoot are set to thrive with ‘Hello Hurricane’. The band are enjoying a newfound independence: a new home studio HQ, a new label, and a return-to-roots creativity and sense of purpose. After ten non-stop years of working as the world’s most humble multi-million selling rock band, the hard-charging North County San Diego-based quintet saw recording sessions for their aptly-titled seventh full-length album as a unique chance to reassess, reflect and rededicate. The band tracked more than 80 songs and allowed themselves to get lost in the music again and get back to basics. “That’s why we see this album as a new beginning of sorts,” continues Foreman, citing the inspiration that likewise moved the whole band “For us it was a feeling of true freedom”.

The band’s renowned live show has developed an incredibly loyal following both in the States and abroad. “For the last decade or so, we’ve been a rock band that really thrives off that interaction with the crowd,” states Butler. “Our motivation for playing music in the first place was a desire to connect with people in a deeper way.” Be sure to check the band out when they hit UK shores in June.

JUNE
Tues 1 LONDON – Forum