Since announcing his signing to Play It Again Sam (and Partisan Records in the US+ Canada) with his first song of 2020 ‘Blue Comanche‘, Westerman is back to announce his highly anticipated debut album. Your Hero Is Not Dead is slated for a June 5th, 2020 release and is the follow-up to his critically-acclaimed Ark EP. Recorded alongside his close friend and producer Nathan Jenkins (A.K.A. Bullion) at first in Southern Portugal before finishing the process in London, Your Hero Is Not Dead is an album about empathy and compassion, struggle and release, and all the ways we contradict and battle within ourselves. The project is full of supremely crafted, groove-hinged songs about moral, political, and ethical grey areas, that find Westerman attempting to resolve external issues by looking inward.

The new single he’s sharing alongside the announcement of the album today, ‘Think I’ll Stay’, was started with a rumination on chronic pain illness, a three-minute sonic balm that simultaneously soothes and energizes. Westerman elaborates: “I wrote this while I was moving a lot. I was thinking about a chronic pain condition when it started. That pain is a very specific type, but I think there’s an inevitable amount of pain that everyone goes through just being alive. A friend was talking to me about how they’re going to be working until they’re 80 years old, so what’s the difference. In the song, I’m trying to say that it’s worth sticking around. It’s a sort of giddy affirmation of being.”. Listen to it HERE. 

Westerman will perform a sold-out show at London’s Hoxton Hall on June 4th, 2020 as well as an in-store at Rough Trade East in London on June 11th. Today he announces additional tour dates in Berlin, Paris, Philly, DC, Boston, Chicago and Seattle. Full tour dates and tickets are on sale now at westerman.world, which has just launched as a new interactive official website that features a custom playlist of songs that inspired the new album, animated illustrations and future sneak peeks of new music before it’s released.

Listen to ‘Think I’ll Stay’ above and find further details on the album, including tracklisting and cover art by renowned New York via Portugal Graphic Designer and Illustrator Bráulio Amado below.

‘Think I’ll Stay‘ is out now, buy/stream it here. 

Press shot by Bex Day

YOUR HERO IS NOT DEAD TRACKLIST
1. Drawbridge
2. The Line
3. Big Nothing Glow
4. Waiting On Design
5. Think I’ll Stay
6. Dream Appropriate
7. Easy Money
8. Blue Commanche
9. Confirmation
10. Paper Dogs
11. Float Over
12. Your Hero Is Not Dead

Out via Play It Again Sam
Pre-order / save here

PRAISE FOR WESTERMAN

“Westerman’s songwriting takes in the tumult of a whirring mind and turns it into music that has the power to soothe modern anxieties, if not solve them” 
Pitchfork

“Developing imperfect ideas into something brilliant”
Noisey

“Manages to delicately balance melodic complexity and a variety of different instruments in a way that sounds not just easy, but effortless”
Dazed

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