Desde então, tem sido um hit para inúmeros outros artistas, incluindo The Monkees, Cage The Elephant e Billie Joe Armstrong dos Green Day. A versão de Eric foi apresentada no anúncio de viagem Expedia/ Superbowl/ Ewan MacGregor em 2022, e a versão dos Cage The Elephant é a nova música tema do podcast Smartless.

Como Eric Goulden é um pouco mais complicado - um músico, artista, escritor, engenheiro de gravação e produtor, ele não gostou nem do mundo da música, nem da mecânica da fama, nem do nome que lhe deram para se esconder atrás de tudo isso, por isso decidiu sair da luz dos holofotes e desaparecer. Lançou vinte e poucos álbuns em quarenta e poucos anos sob vários nomes - The Len Bright Combo, Le Beat Group Electrique, The Donovan Of Trash, The Hitsville House Band, e com sua esposa como metade de Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, onde percebeu finalmente que estava preso ao Wreckless Eric.

Os três álbuns mais recentes de Eric, amERICA, Construction Time & Demolition e Transience, são amplamente elogiados como os seus melhores trabalhos. Os seus álbuns contêm pop, chiclete, lixo de garagem e psicadelismo - jornadas líricas e sonoras, explosões pop, viagens épicas, instantâneos Polaroid.

Este novo álbum, Leisureland, marca um retorno ao seu mundo mais desorganizado de gravação - guitarras e teclados analógicos temperamentalmente imprevisíveis, beat-boxes e loops em conjunto com um baterista de verdade, Sam Shepherd, que ele conheceu num café local em Catskill, Nova Iorque. Ele ficou encantado ao descobrir que Sam morava na esquina e poderia facilmente aparecer para colocar bateria nas faixas recém-gravadas. A metodologia de gravação pode ter sido americana contemporânea, mas o assunto é quase inteiramente britânico. Ele também contém mais instrumentais do que qualquer um de seus álbuns anteriores.

'The achievement for Wreckless Eric is to have made new music that connects to old music without maudlin nostalgia or huffy defensiveness, refusing to let age dim the passion for the music that means the most to him. In other words, he rocks'. - Ken Tucker - FRESH AIR / NPR

'burns like a lost Crazy Horse classic' - Ben Graham - SHINDIG!

'a scarily powerful and forward-moving musical threat' - David Quantick MOJO MAGAZINE

Wreckless Eric diz:

Before the pandemic I used to tour all the time - it was almost as though I was addicted to it - new places, new people. During the lockdown I couldn’t go anywhere. I think that’s why I started to invent a place.

Covid hit me hard, damaged my lungs, gave me a heart attack - I almost died in the emergency room. I began to feel extremely…mortal. I began to look at where I’ve been and where I come from. Maybe to get my mind off the ultimate destination.

When Standing Water first came along I had the British seaside town of Cromer in North Norfolk in mind. It quickly encompassed other seaside towns until it became its own place. British seaside towns with their stagnant boating lakes (filled in and set up for Crazy Golf) are a most peculiar contradiction - amusement arcades, unemployment. People flock in, spend money, but the locals don’t get rich, they pushed out. They end up on the Brownfield Estate, tucked away behind the out of town supermarket, where local children play on grassed-over landfills that seep methane gas.

I thought of my birthplace, Newhaven in East Sussex. My parents hated it - they couldn’t wait to leave. They’d moved there because of my dad’s job. I was born there and even though it might be a dump, it was where I came from, and for a young boy it was paradise - docks, cranes, cargo ships, fishing boats, a Victorian swing bridge, a steam locomotive rolling through the town centre… And the ferry service to France. I could see it, from the cliffs alongside the dull bungalow suburb where we moved when advancement made home ownership possible - the old Versailles steaming out of the harbour mouth and disappearing over the horizon to a distant somewhere else.

When I was growing up in South East England I didn’t know how the world was laid out though I had a pretty good idea that it was fucked-up. But my parameters were narrow - I lived an enclosed life. A walk to the end of the road, a bus ride, a train, a short walk to the school gates at the other end. Always the same bus, the same train, and the same walk. I got a bicycle and the possibilities widened - ride away from home for half a day, spend the other half riding back. Then I learned to hitchhike, I hitched rides to Brighton to see rock bands who sometimes came from America. I understood that the world was bigger than I first thought it was but I still hadn’t been much further than the end of the road.

I was dumb, but in my defence the information that might help me to become less dumb was not readily available - Peacehaven Public Library didn’t carry books by Jack Kerouac, and it never occurred to me to look at a map, or seek out a forward facing independent book shop because, as I said, I was dumb. I was also stoned, detached, confused, and waging a battle with the ancient neolithic settlement that lived under our house and threatened to climb on top of me most nights and crush the life out of me. I was a weird kid. We slept with our heads facing north.

When I was seventeen I gave up on trying to tunnel my way out of South East England, I learned to drive - it was easy, I was a natural. Since then I’ve driven all over the place and driven the length and breadth of the United States numerous times. I’ve been everywhere, man. I can tell you exactly how fucked-up it is.

I should tell you about the new album, but I can’t - you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. It shouldn’t be difficult. There’s a cough on every one of my later albums. This one breaks with tradition, it contains a sniff. There might be a small prize if you can find it, perhaps a weekend getaway for three people in Standing Water.

Welcome to Leisureland.

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