Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth are teaming up for a joint album. Utopian Ashes, out in July on Third Man, brings together the Primal Scream and Savages singers for 10 songs inspired by such country partnerships as Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris and the LDR-beloved George Jones/Tammy Wynette. The album features playing from Jehnny Beth’s longtime collaborator Johnny Hostile (bass) and three of Gillespie’s Primal Scream bandmates: Andrew Innes (guitar), Martin Duffy (piano), and Darrin Mooney (drums).

Lead single “Remember We Were Lovers” arrives today with a video by Douglas Hart, which you can watch below.

In addition to the album with Jehnny Beth, Gillespie recently announced a new memoir called Tenement Kid. Named for a song on Primal Scream’s 2013 album More Light, the book traces Gillespie’s life from his childhood in working-class Glasgow up through the release of Screamadelica in 1991. The book is out in October via White Rabbit.

OK, back to Utopian Ashes. According to promo materials for the album, Gillespie and Jehnny Beth met in 2015 when they were both invited to perform with Suicide at the Barbican. Jehnny covered Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s “Some Velvet Morning” with Primal Scream the following year, and in 2017 the whole aforementioned crew gathered in Paris to make the album. In a statement, Jehnny Beth explains, “In the same way you create characters for a novel, we’ve created characters here. But you put yourself in it, because you’re trying to understand the human situation. The singing has to be authentic. That’s all that matters.” Gillespie adds, “I was thinking about two people living alone, together but apart, existing and suffering in a psychic malaise, who plough on because of responsibilities and commitments. It’s about the impermanence of everything — an existential fact that everyone has to face at some point in their lives.”

TRACKLIST:
01 “Chase It Down”
02 “English Town”
03 “Remember We Were Lovers”
04 “Your Heart Will Aways Be Broken”
05 “Stones of Silence”
06 “You Don’t Know What Love Is”
07 “Self-Crowned King of Nothingness”
08 “You Can Trust Me Now”
09 “Living A Lie”
10 “Sunk In Reverie”

Utopian Ashes is out 7/2 on Third Man.