The new album, You’ve Always Been Here, comprises of 11 covers, from Matt Bellamy’s fragment of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ to the wall of sound that is ‘Love’s Gone Bad’. The group carries Northern Soul into a new dimension, full of electric guitars, feedback, and the combined talent of musicians at the very top of their game.

View this post on Instagram

YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN HERE IS OUT NOW We hope you all love it! Grateful for all your support up until this moment. Buy your copy of #YouveAlwaysBeenHere through the link in our bio!

A post shared by The Jaded Hearts Club (@thejadedheartsclub) on Oct 2, 2020 at 1:45am PDT

In case you missed it, The Jaded Hearts Club are a supergroup in every single sense of the word. They have the most stellar line-up – Miles Kane (The Last Shadow Puppets) and Nic Cester (Jet) as joint frontmen, Graham Coxon (Blur) and Jamie Davis playing guitar, Matt Bellamy (Muse) on bass and Sean Payne (the Zutons) as the drummer. Sometimes Abi Harding (The Zutons) joins them on the saxophone.

To prove it, The Jaded Hearts Club released a series of singles leading up to this release: ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’ (see below), ‘This Love Starved Heart Of Mine (It’s Killing Me)’ and ‘Love’s Gone Bad’. It seems fair to say that all the energy and glamour of The Jaded Hearts Club is found among these three singles; while the rest of the album tracks are exciting, they don’t have the explosive enthusiasm of their early singles. They come with energetic, lockdown-appropriate, black-and-white music videos, and Matt Bellamy in different but equally intriguing Rule Britannia-esque accessories. It’s all very, very cool.

Following these, You’ve Always Been Here has the best intentions in the world. The band’s desire to reinvent Northern Soul is overpowering and infectious, and you can sense how eager they were to find out what their combined talents could do. A lot, is the answer. Sometimes it completely hits the mark. Sometimes, though, it falls flat, stripping the covers of their unique qualities, leaving behind something that is undeniably very talented, but a little soulless.

Ultimately the album is technically impressive, but it wants for a sense of cohesion. In many ways so does the group themselves; the six (sometimes seven) strong and talented personalities sort of blur together. There is absolutely no doubt that this group could tackle any song in the world with spades of ability, but You’ve Always Been Here could probably have done with a bit more of a story. The Jaded Hearts Club are easily the greatest cover band in the world, but we don’t quite know what makes them tick.

All three of the album’s singles are particular highlights, as are Nic Cester’s ‘Long and Lonesome Road’ and ‘I Put a Spell on You’. To my mind, this is the version of the line-up which delivers the most. Nic Cester doing the vocals, accompanied by powerful percussion and the familiar wind instruments of Northern Soul feels like the group’s greatest strength – and where they’re strong, they’re unstoppable.

Since 2017, the group have shared powerful, covers of everything from the Beatles (their starting point) to The Isley Brothers. According to Rough Trade, Davis wanted a Beatles band to play for his birthday. He’s quoted as saying: “I knew a bunch of 1/2 decent musician friends so I asked if they’d form an early ‘60s Beatles band. Everyone had such a good time that we decided to do it again.” Their website declares that they “have been described as the ultimate Beatles cover band.”

Surely, in one of those dream dinner party games (six people on your ideal dinner table, dead or alive, you know the drill) you couldn’t come up with a better line-up. What we really want from The Jaded Hearts Club, though, is a bit of purpose – we all know that there’s a niche for them in this current moment, but none of us know why. When they do show us exactly what 21^st century Northern Soul can do, it’s completely unforgettable.

Supergroup is absolutely the right term for the combined talent of Miles Kane (The Last Shadow Puppets) and Nic Cester (Jet) as joint frontmen, Graham Coxon (Blur) and Jamie Davis playing guitar, Matt Bellamy (Muse) on bass and Sean Payne (the Zutons) as the drummer. Sometimes Abi Harding (The Zutons) joins them on the saxophone. Musically, they are as fantastic as you’d hope – Kane and Cester have different but extremely powerful voices, and the rest of the band make their instruments look and sound like a natural extension of themselves.

View this post on Instagram

OCTOBER 2ND. PRE-ORDER NOW YouveAlwaysBeenHere link in bio.

A post shared by The Jaded Hearts Club (@thejadedheartsclub) on Aug 17, 2020 at 5:10am PDT

Currently, we’ve only seen the group publish covers – mainly incredible, stripped back, guitar-based versions of Northern soul classics. There is rumour of original music, and they play all sorts at their infamous live shows, but it doesn’t look like any of this will feature on their debut album. For now, having the band re-invigorate Northern soul classics is more than good enough! The singles they’ve released in 2020 include versions of ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’ (July), ‘This Love Starved Heart of Mine (It’s Killing Me)’ (April) and short little version of ‘We’ll Meet Again’, sung by Matt Bellamy.

Regarding their newest track, Kane called it: “‘Love’s Gone Bad’, a rare northern soul stomper that we dug from the underground. We beefed it up and gave it golden wings with matching loafers! Be prepared to dance!” 

The video is so cool – it’s all in black and white, set in London’s Moth Club, and Matt Bellamy is wearing heart-shaped sunglasses. It’ll have you dancing, spinning, and probably online shopping for loafers and corduroy trousers. Mainly it’s Kane dancing with a partner. The other band members do show up though, playing their instruments while Kane and his partner leap about, spectacularly in time with each other. Although, of course, The Jaded Hearts Club offer a rock-based take on Northern soul, the video is very much in the spirit of the 1960s dancehalls where the genre really took off.

The group formed in 2017. According to Rough Trade, Davis wanted a Beatles band to play for his birthday, and he’s quoted as saying: “I knew a bunch of 1/2 decent musician friends so I asked if they’d form an early ‘60s Beatles band. Everyone had such a good time that we decided to do it again.” In 2019 they recorded a live album at London’s iconic ‘The 100 Club’. Their website declares that they “have been described as the ultimate Beatles cover band.”

It’s not so long to wait for their album now – but you should know that the 12” version, on marble patterned vinyl, is already sold out for pre-orders! The Jaded Hearts Club are so fantastically energetic, even these three-minute videos feel like a true taste of what they’re like live. Hopefully there will be more of that to come, following the release of You’ve Always Been Here.

The lucky fans who get tickets to the event, will get the change to watch Nic Cester & The Maliano Elettrica live at their exclusive London gig, but if they are expecting the same old rock ‘n’ roll sound, then they are in for a shock. ‘Sugar Rush’ has been described as “more psychedelic, soul-influenced blues-rock sound.”

Speaking about what inspired the change in direction musically, Cester, said: “I always have liked music – I have listened to all sorts of genres from Jazz to soul music. My favourite singer is probably Dean Martin, and I wanted to set myself a challenge and see how many different styles I could touch on and how I could make it cohesive. I wanted to have as many twists and turns as possible, and I was pushing myself to go to new places.

Speaking about his new album ‘Sugar Rush’, Cester, said: “The goal was to challenge myself to find a new way to express myself musically. I took myself way out of my comfort zone and took a lot of risks. The end result was well worth the journey. It’s definitely my best work to date. I am, a lot of love and a lot of passion has gone into this project, and I’m very proud of it, so it is important to me that it has a voice and people know that its there.”

The singer/song-writer and guitarist, has also recently released the video for his new track ‘Hard Times’, which is a stripped back emotional song that showcases Cester’s raw vocal ability. “When I started writing that (‘Hard Times’) song, I felt like I was on to something good. It was the first song of real substance that I wrote when I began writing for this album because I hadn’t done anything for almost six years and I tentatively started writing again when I was living in Berlin, and I wasn’t sure what to do. It took a while the first couple of things I wrote were not very good, but I slowly started getting better and better,” says Cester, speaking about the track ‘Hard Times’.

He continues: “When that song came up, I thought “I can still do this.” I wanted Hard Times to be about something of substance and importance. I was reflecting on my relationship with my father who passed away and the fact that I was about to become a father myself. I thought if there was any message that I could tell to my little girl was to take the fear out of life by accepting the fact sometimes things will be hard but that’s ok and its nothing to be scared about.”