Well, I guess this is growing up. On Marmite and Boudica and Red Dwarf and The Van Pelt and the best punk rock album of the year.

Earlier this month, Frank Turner released his ninth studio album. Entitled FTHC, it is by far his most "punk rock" album to date (I suppose one could argue that his previous album, 2019's No Man's Land, which was primarily a historical folk album with each song telling a different tale about a woman from history, ranging from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Christa McAuliffe, was his most "punk rock" album to date for entirely different reasons, but that's more of a semantic argument than we need right now). FTHC is his most personal album to date - no easy feat for someone who's made a career of wearing his tape deck heart on his sleeve. It may indeed be his best album to date. It is, most certainly and perhaps not surprisingly given the above factors, his first album to debut at #1 on the charts in his native UK.

We caught up with Turner the day after learning that FTHC was, in fact, named the number one selling album in the land. We talked about the importance of that distinction, particularly as it came fifteen years and nine albums into his solo career. We talked about the influences behind the album and about how getting married and turning 40 and still being alive has provided a different sort of perspective that wasn't afforded to his younger self. We talked about the making of the album (the image of Ilan Rubin recording drums in a Los Angeles studio over Zoom while Frank watched from London and producer Rich Costey watched from Vermont is still one I find endlessly amusing). We talked about the stories behind some of the album's more personal tracks, although I did leave out the songs about his struggles with anxiety and cocaine addiction and how his relationship with his father changed after the latter came out as a trans woman several years ago; those have been covered at length in other outlets. And perhaps most importantly, we talked about the legion of Turner fans, aptly known as the Frank Turner Army, that has been steadily building for the better part of the last decade and who, frankly, rightly share in a lot of the success behind FTHC. They even pitched in for a few questions that certainly ran a stylistic gamut.

If you haven't bought FTHC yet, get it at your local indie record store or here: https://store.frank-turner.com/

If you want to go back in time and read our chat with Frank from the steps of Boston's City Hall before his 2014 appearance at Boston Calling, go here: https://dyingscene.com/ds-interview-and-photo-gallery-frank-turner-in-boston-on-his-1567-show-rise-to-fame/

If you want to watch my then-four-year-old daughter sing "English Curse," go here. She said it was okay, I promise. https://youtu.be/VgBHrbP0kRU Listen to The Van Pelt here: https://thevanpelt.bandcamp.com/album/sultans-of-sentiment

To read more about Boudica, go here: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Boudica/

If you want to buy Marmite, go here: https://www.marmite.co.uk/

Watch Red Dwarf here: https://www.reddwarf.co.uk/tv/

(*both laughs*) theme song is an excerpt from [laughs] track "Hurts To Laugh." © KALI MASI 2021 ℗ Take This To Heart Records 2021