Gorgeous new Dead Slow Hoot album dropped yesterday. I think it’s a brilliant record, and it was really enjoyable and fulfilling speaking to Hugo about it in depth and writing this bio for them! I think it’s an album which benefits from repeated listens – every time I listen to it I find something new and wonderful on it. The bio I wrote for them below!
Dead Slow Hoot – Orbits Intervened (2025)
On Orbits Intervened Dead Slow Hoot present a careering, delicate, sprawling rock record which tells a lifetime’s worth of stories. It’s the sound of a life lived, love held and lost, and a voice coming to grips with its own power and incapabilities. It’s a triumph and a joy, and quietly one of the most bewitching works to worm its way out of these shores in recent memory.
It took my whole lifetime
And that isn’t right
But I owe mine to you
So thanks for the ride (I guess?)
– It Takes A Lifetime
Much has changed since Dead Slow Hoot formed in Sheffield in 2014. After feeling limited in his prior life as an “acoustic singer songwriter type”, frontman Hugo Lynch stumbled upon new friends and collaborators whilst playing in his University gospel choir and attending “otherwise uninspiring rock society jam sessions”. Luke Featherstone, Sam Webb, Dom Lo, Emmett Cruddas and Tom Featherstone were welcomed into the fold in the ensuing years as, inspired by J Tillman’s transformation from six-string-wielding troubadour to spotlight-bothering bandleader Father John Misty, Lynch set about forming Dead Slow Hoot; a band that ten years later, following support shows with Big Thief, Billy Bragg and Slow Club, is still evolving, learning and, crucially, revolving around his uniquely therapeutic and optimistic songwriting. Now, in 2025, the band are set to release the finest work of their career to date, a staggering and seismic album, overflowing with melodies, heart and storytelling which calls to mind some of the band’s biggest influences: Bruce Springsteen, Titus Andronicus and Car Seat Headrest.
Lynch himself is at the heart of these stories which often approach life’s greatest complexities and heartbreaks (themes here include faded friendships, ‘great man theory’, suicide and the Magdalene Laundries scandal) from a deeply personal and, ultimately, peaceful perspective. You get the feeling these words were written staring at the sky, letting a Spring sun absolve Lynch of long-held miseries. He is able to position himself close enough and distant enough from these pains, holding them at arm’s length, exploring their every angle.
Surmounting the distance
That I have introduced between
The longing, deep in my heart
And a place where I might see my goals achieved
Is just like vaulting the garden fence
Easier to follow than to lead
– Sleeping Before The Big Day
As he approaches these feelings he is able to weave himself around them over the course of a song, often coming to his concluding thought just in time as his band reaches their highest heights;
Only love remains
As much today as ever
I wish that I had loved you better
– All My Love Remains
Lynch admits his approach to songwriting is perhaps at odds with the trends of the modern music industry, which is constantly calling for immediacy. Feel now, write now, release now, post now, post now, post now. Rather, Lynch – for all its cliche – sees his craft as a therapeutic one. A peacemaker by nature, he feels the need to take stock of feelings before expressing them, recognising the experiences of all involved. He readily concedes that he often doesn’t fully understand a situation until he’s written a song about it. Before then it’s all “just soup in his head”.
“As I’ve become more open to the world I think the music has become more optimistic and refined, I think the sentiment is usually a bit maudlin or melancholic and each song is kind of like a letter to myself although on the last EP and on this album there are more lyrics that are addressed to specific people.” – Hugo Lynch
Since their move from Sheffield to London, Cruddas, Featherstone and Lo have become increasingly more integral to the process as Dead Slow Hoot have forged a reputation as one of the capital’s most enthralling and dynamic live acts. They’re tight enough to play loose; often playing with the form and structure of songs, dropping in Springsteen and Guided By Voices covers at the drop of a hat and often incorporating harmonica and banjo into proceedings. There’s no two Dead Slow Hoot shows the same, and that’s reason enough alone to keep coming back.
“When it comes to playing live, I try not to overthink it. I’m not trying to be an arranger, I just want it to feel real, for us and for the audience. When a song gets brought to the band, it’s often already at a stage where it could just be played on acoustic guitar; I bring it to the band because I trust them to make it better and take it to places I couldn’t go on my own.”
You feel their live-ness in the record. Produced by Joseph Futak (Tapir!, piglet, lilo, Baggio), it feels like a band in a room, playing as if their life depends on it. The quiet bits are played with the same intensity and intention as the loud bits, and Futak’s fingerprints are to be found all over this record which was recorded intermittently, predominantly in-the-room and with minimum overdubs, over a three year period. On Worried About The Rain, a scorching whirr of a track produced and engineered by Alexander Sokolow (Tugboat Captain), Lynch’s down-the-line vocal is inflected with such immensity you can’t help but lurch forward in line with his voice – a triumph which Lynch concedes is indebted to Futak’s empathetic direction as they retracked his vocal take atop Sokolow’s band mix. Elsewhere on Tired, a song which Lynch struggled for years to find an ending for, Futak encouraged the band to lean into it’s formless finale. The song exhales in its final moments, and becomes the album’s emotional centrepiece. It’s a rare moment of peaceful, rocking chair beauty in an album full of throat-busting euphoria.
One of the greatest compliments you can pay Lynch is that, after listening to Orbits Intervened, you feel as if you’ve got to know the man singing it to you. It’s a rare ability he holds to tell his stories with such beauty and guile, yet to not forego his pop and melodic sensibilities. It’s a riveting and enthralling listen from the moment the needle drops, and each spin unwraps new lines to love, new melodies to love, new moments to love. If there’s one thing that becomes more clear than any other, it’s that this is an album truly worth loving.
We’re tugging at the fabric
Suspended in between
The grounding force of others
Our orbits, intervened
So it’s ok that you’re leaving
Though I hoped that you would stay
I love you
I’ve got nothing else to say
– Orbits Intervened