#touring-economics

#touring-economics

It took four years to write and record its seven songs, which were spurred by the Radiohead guitarist's experience of falling into a deep depression and navigating decades of emotional trauma exacerbated by the pandemic lockdowns. O'Brien learned that being immersed in nature is where he felt the strongest - the title Blue Morpho refers to a rare species of butterfly he encountered with his family. "Part of my healing journey was walking in the trees and in the river, feeling the light, and recalibrating there," he explains. "My cathedral is in the woods."

For several years, the supposed death of the band has been cropping up in state-of-the-nation style music discourse. The obvious culprit? Financial hurdles of the sort that even successful bands can no longer overcome. This autumn, Garbage vocalist Shirley Manson launched a diatribe against the unsustainable realities of touring. Meanwhile, UK post-punk four piece Dry Cleaning were forced to postpone their US concerts due to "increasingly hostile economic forces".