Alex Lifeson has revealed he has almost completed work on a new album with former Coney Hatch bass guitar player Andy Curran, and that the pair aim to release the 10-track effort “late summer, early fall” this year.
In conversation with Sweetwater, the Rush legend and electric guitar icon announced that he and Curran had been working on a side project – called Envy of None – with the help of singer-songwriter Maiah Wynne.
“Andy approached me about four years ago, shortly after the last Rush tour, about adding some guitar on some of the things he was doing,” Lifeson recalled when quizzed about the origins of the project. “I did that. A few months later, he sent another one, and did that.
“Then we started getting more serious, and then we found a great singer, Maiah Wynne,” he continued. “So we’ve basically done an album’s worth of material that we hope to release sometime soon. I’m really excited about that.”
On when fans can expect to hear the album in full, Lifeson added, “We’re just working on that part. All the music is recorded. We are mixing currently. We’re in a good place, but it is very challenging.
“The industry is so, so very different than it was certainly 10 years ago, never mind last year,” he added. “We’ll see. Hopefully late summer, early fall we might have something. But we are very, very excited about it. It’s pretty cool stuff, I think.”
Speaking with Ultimate Classic Rock, Curran offered up even more details, revealing that the album will feature a significant sonic shift from the pair's previous material with their respective bands.
“There’s some beautiful guitar that he’s played all over it – but full transparency, it’s not Rush and it’s not Coney Hatch,” he revealed.
“It’s like, if you can picture maybe Massive Attack with a little bit of some electronic stuff with Nine Inch Nails influences, with this beautiful voice and some very, very dark, heavy sounds. That’s kind of what this project sounds like.”
Curran also shed some light on Lifeson’s guitar recording process and the six-string sounds we can look forward to, commenting, “He’s gone out of his way to process and put cool things on his guitar that you’re like, ‘What did you do there? This sounds like a violin,’ or, ‘This sounds like a keyboard!’ He’s having a real fun time manipulating those guitar sounds.
The news of a full-length album comes after the release of Kabul Blues and Spy House, two solo instrumental tracks that Lifeson unveiled to celebrate his newly announced Epiphone Les Paul Axcess Standard signature guitar.
