The Louisiana, Bristol, GB
Friday, 13 March 2026
7:00pm
£13 + BF
16+ (under 18s to be accompanied by a responsible adult)
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Irish songwriter A.S. Fanning announces his fourth studio album Take Me Back To Nowhere, arriving February 6th via K&F Records. On October 17th, he kicks off the album lead up with ‘Romance’, offering the first glimpse into Fanning's most disorienting and immersive work to date.
Opening with layered synths that build into an anthemic crescendo over a steady drumbeat, ‘Romance’ showcases Fanning's distinctive baritone voice—drawing comparisons to Nick Cave—delivering a stark, disillusioned meditation on love and human connection. The track maps emotional desolation onto stark sonic terrain, stripping love down to its rawest components: fear masquerading as desire, need mistaken for connection.
"This is a disillusioned love song," Fanning explains. "Representing a feeling of hopelessness through imagery of a barren physical landscape. There's also some hint of room for hope or vulnerability in the line 'love lets you in…' but it's generally quite a cynical song suggesting that romantic feelings are just a confused mixture of fear, need, and desire."
The single introduces broader themes that run throughout Take Me Back To Nowhere: inescapable isolation and the idea that our relationships are shaped more by our internal chaos than any genuine connection with others. "In some ways it touches on the wider themes of the album," he continues "That everyone is isolated and that their own issues and interior processes are what's informing their relationships with other people—that who you fall in love with is just based on your own particular cocktail of neuroses, which you somehow find reflected in another person."
The upcoming album represents Fanning's deepest exploration yet of the internal world, influenced by his immersion in science fiction literature—particularly the works of Ursula K. Le Guin and J.G. Ballard—during the writing process. The album grapples with disorder, confusion, and the collapse of objective reality, themes that emerged during a period of creative disruption following a wrist injury that fundamentally altered his songwriting approach. The result is an album meant to be disorienting while staying within a particular world and atmosphere, both lyrically and musically—a conceptual work without a clear narrative, embracing chaos as its guiding principle.
Drawing from Irish literary tradition and folk music while incorporating elements of 60s psychedelia and rock 'n' roll, Fanning has carved out a unique space in the European indie landscape. Since relocating to Berlin following the dissolution of his previous band The Last Tycoons, he has released three critically acclaimed solo albums: Second Life (2017),You Should Go Mad (2020), and Mushroom Cloud (2023), which earned him Songwriter of the Year honors from Far Out Magazine.
Show starts at 7:00pm.
