Kodaline talk teaming up with big pop producers on new album Politics Of Living

Kodaline have opened up about their forthcoming album, revealing they want to step things up after enlisting the help of some of pop's biggest writers and producers.

The Irish band are gearing up to release their third collection, Politics Of Living, on August 10. The quartet's previous albums both reached Number 1 on the Official Irish Albums Chart and charted in the in the Top 5 in the UK.

Johnny McDaid, who is a member of fellow Irish band Snow Patrol, serves as executive producer on the record; having recently worked on Rag'n'Bone Man's chart-topping debut, Ed Sheeran's Divide and Shawn Mendes' self-titled third album.

“We’re really happy with it," singer Steve Garrigan told OfficialCharts.com. "On the first and second album we worked with the same people and we did everything ourselves. On this album we’ve worked with different producers and writers, like Johnny [McDaid]. We’ve never really done writing sessions or anything like that but the whole thing was very chilled. We thought, let’s give it a go and push ourselves to do something different.

"It was interesting for us because it really took us out of our comfort zone. Like any new album you're about to put out, it’s scary. It’s what I presume it’s like when you send your kids to their first day of school. We’re very proud of it and excited. Some of the tracks we’ve been playing at shows and festivals are going down really well, which is encouraging." 

Meanwhile, songwriter Wayne Hector - behind hits for One Direction, Westlife, Paloma Faith and loads more - also contributed to the collection, along with pop guru Johnny Coffer (Beyonce), Jonas Jeberg (Kylie Minogue). "He's an absolute pop genius," Steve said of Wayne. "He came over to my house in Dublin and we just danced around the piano jumping up and down. His back catalogue is outrageous, it's probably about a mile long!" 

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The fruits of their collaborations can be heard on recent single Follow Your Fire, currently Ireland's biggest Irish artist single of the year, and the emotional Shed A Tear.

Despite the title, Steve explained the album is more about the politics of real life than about what's happening in government. 

“It’s about the ups and downs, the disagreements, the loss, the heartaches. It’s an open-ended title I suppose. There’s actually a song we wrote a song called Politics Of Living but we’ve actually held it back, even though we all love it. We’ve done that before on our first album In A Perfect World – don’t ask me why we do that!" 

Following their recent sold out show to 21,000 fans at Dublin’s Malahide Castle, Kodaline have a string of summer festival performances lined up, including Isle Of Wight and TRNSMT. European and US dates for this autumn are expected to be announced soon.

© IRMA