The new issue of Hot Press, out now with Taylor Swift and Snow Patrol on the flip-cover, includes a wide-ranging interview with the latter’s Gary Lightbody.
Top of the agenda is Wildness, the brilliant new Snow Patrol album, which addresses with painstaking honesty the depression and alcoholism Gary had been struggling with.
“I didn’t have self-belief,” he tells us. “I didn’t have any confidence in me. And I thank God for being in a band that never stopped believing in me. They never once gave me shit.
“I had to get through a lot to make this record and doing that meant I opened a door in myself that has never been opened before, and now it’s closed again,” he continues. “But now, I’m not afraid to look in that door again. I’m not afraid to go into that deep, deep place. I’m not afraid of what is going to come up. I’ve faced all my demons.”
Now happy and healthy again, Gary is justifiably proud of the band’s new opus.
“I refuse to say the line, ‘This is the best record yet…’ even though I’m technically about to do so!” he smiles. “It’s the record I’m most proud of, which is something I’ve never said before. I have tremendous amounts of faith in it and a tremendous amount of love for it. I’ve never truly had this level of affection for a record.”
Gary was also eager to join our ‘100 Voices For Repeal’.
“My thoughts have always been that women should have the right to choose and determine what happens to their own bodies,” he proffers.
With Trump, good books, Ed Sheeran, Nick Cave, vertigo, the Northern Ireland football team, American road trips, sunshine LA culture and Seamus Heaney also up for discussion, it makes for a fascinating read!