DEAD LETTERS

Product Information

Brownlee, Bill (2 April 2008). "Review: Hotel Cafe Tour". The Kansas City Star . Retrieved 21 February 2013. Pearson, Beth (20 November 2002). "Music Aqualung, St Andrews in the Square, Glasgow". Newsquest. Archived from the original on 12 May 2014 . Retrieved 21 February 2013.

I’m sort of thumbing my nose at the world of streaming” he told me recently on The Art of Longevity podcast. Well it’s paid off. Dead Letters is less strange, more beautiful, and the best work Matt Hales has made so far as Aqualung.

One of the great things about streaming is that the system tells you what the best songs are that you’ve ever written. It ranks them, so you can also see all the songs you’ve written that aren’t very good as well. Accordingly this next song is…absolutely worthless!”. Collaborating with all kinds of artists - including Lianne La Havas, Bat For Lashes, Mika, Tom Chaplin, Jason Mraz, For King & Country and countless others – Hales’ hectic yet immensely rewarding schedule resulted in huge acclaim, including both an Ivor Novello and a Grammy. No wonder, then, that aside from occasionally briefly resurfacing, Aqualung remained in hibernation. Brown, Helen (6 July 2012). "Lianne La Havas, Is Your Love Big Enough?, review". Telegraph Media Group . Retrieved 22 February 2013.

A dead letter is one that is undeliverable and unreturned by the post office. A message that sits in purgatory. A dead letter drop is a place where messages and other material can be left and collected in secret, without the sender and the recipient meeting. All of which feels like the perfect metaphor for the songs that Hales had written. Ganz, Caryn (10 March 2010). "Sara Bareilles Turns Panic into Rebirth on Uptempo Summer Disc". Wenner Media LLC . Retrieved 21 February 2013.

Marketplace

Kellman, Andy (29 May 2012). "Fall to Grace – Paloma Faith". AllMusic . Retrieved 21 February 2013.

Vaziri, Aidin (9 November 2012). "Lianne La Havas' dreams are coming true". Hearst Corporation . Retrieved 22 February 2013. Hales' work has earned him various awards and nominations, including two Grammy and three Ivor Novello nominations. Eliezer, Christie (16 November 2011). "Amy Meredith: new international management deal, split from Sony". The Music Network . Retrieved 22 February 2013.percent of number one hits between 1958 and 1990 were in multiple keys,” he noted. “What’s odd is that after 1990, key changes are employed much less frequently, if at all, in number one hits.” BRIGHTER THAN SUNSHINE: "2003 10 09 Official Scottish Singles Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. officialcharts.com/. Songs have been getting shorter and shorter. Now 3 minutes and 17 seconds long, the average pop song lost a whole minute between 2020 and 1990. It’s all because streaming allows people to skip songs that don’t get ‘to the point’ soon enough. Maynard, Trent (17 December 2012). "news: Lianne La Havas' year in review". Box Television. Archived from the original on 5 February 2013 . Retrieved 22 February 2013.

Matthew Nicholas Hales (born 17 January 1972) [1] is an English singer, songwriter, musician and record producer who has been performing professionally under the name Aqualung since the early 2000s. [2] Aqualung is best known in the UK for his song " Strange and Beautiful", which was featured on a television advertisement for the new Volkswagen Beetle during the summer of 2002 [3] and went on to become a top 10 hit on the UK Singles Chart later that year. [4] In the United States, Aqualung is also known for the song " Brighter Than Sunshine", which had considerable airplay and was used in the film A Lot Like Love [5] and various television spots. Hales has released seven albums as Aqualung. The most recent, Dead Letters, appeared in 2022. That was Matt’s rather tongue-in-cheek cue to launch into Champion of the World, alas, not a streaming hit. But most definitely not worthless either, the song is as close to a hit single as he’ll write these days (and a surefire hit in a parallel universe of good taste). It even has a Doobie Brother’s bounce! Fool’ starts off as a sombre piano ballad. As the song progresses strings and guitars gently explode from the speakers. These tiny maelstroms match the lyrical content of the song. “It’s been a while since I told the truth”; “You think I’m a fool / I think you’re right” and “You are the hurricane that blows me away” are wonderfully telling lyrics. GOOD TIMES GONNA COME: "2002 12 08 Official Scottish Singles Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. officialcharts.com/.Dead Letters is the new album from Aqualung - aka songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Matt Hales - his first in more than seven years. In the time between the previous Aqualung album, 2015’s ‘10 Futures’, and the release of ‘Dead Letters’, Hales’ reputation as a songwriter and producer flourished. Collaborating with all kinds of artists – including Lianne La Havas, Bat For Lashes, Mika, Tom Chaplin, Jason Mraz, For King & Country and countless others – his hectic yet immensely rewarding schedule resulted in huge acclaim, including both an Ivor Novello and a Grammy. No wonder, then, that aside from occasionally briefly resurfacing, Aqualung remained in hibernation. Hales grew up in Southampton, where his parents ran an independent record shop. [10] He aspired to be a musician from an early age, writing songs using the family piano when he was just 4 years old. When he was 16, Hales was awarded a scholarship to study music composition at Winchester College. Within a year, he wrote his first symphony titled "Life Cycle", [11] and formed his first band, which carried several different names during its lifespan. In the spring of 1990, the band (known at the time as Mecano Pig) [12] produced their debut self-titled album, but broke up soon afterwards. That same year, Hales moved to London to study music at City University, [13] and in 1992 formed a new band with his brother Ben called Gravel Monsters. [14] RUTH / the 45s [ edit ] Streaming has been doing some strange things to music, you may have noticed. None of this has been lost on Matt Hales. After all, not only does he make and release music as Aqualung, but he also writes and produces music for some very successful streaming artists, so he knows the score you might say. Yet on Aqualung’s latest album Dead Letters, he’s not bothered one bit about conforming to streaming conventions. Indeed, if ‘side one’ contains the big grand opener and ‘the (parallel universe) hits’ then ‘side two’ is the introspective half, full of personal stories, life sketches and dedications to family and loved ones. Each song is beautifully worked, with some rather wonderful chamber pop arrangements. On returning to England from the USA and making a new home in the South West, Hales was reacquainted with an old piano (which even came with vomit stains from prior family use). That piano adorns the inside cover sleeve of the album and proved to be the central tool in this record’s creation, with Hales composing sketch after sketch that eventually shaped themselves into the album's nine fabulous songs. ‘ Bad Dreams’, the album’s closer, is a masterpiece. It’s nearly 8 minutes long and not a second wasted. Finally, just before the needle gravitates towards the centre, Hales whispers ‘so’, just as the record started.