Echo Hotel return with “Yesterday’s News”, their first single since 2021’s airy heartbreaker “Hives”. Breezy and relaxed, but with a mournful edge, the track follows and develops the laid-back sound of “Hives” but dials in a very subtle sense of unease beneath the delicate sidesticks and airy synths. The track’s lyrics were inspired by the concept of “kipple” in Phillip K Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, that being “useless junk or clutter” that proliferates and multiplies on the margins of our vision and our lives to the point of threatening to overrun us. Lead singer Ed Hambly adds:

 

“I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder for random sentimental bits and bobs and have amassed a collection of cinema ticket stubs, bills from restaurant dinners, the odd theatre programme, flyers for gigs I was handed but never went to, torn wristbands and the like - almost like the contents of a scrapbook I lack the means and the will to complete. I suppose it’s nice to keep all this stuff but all it really does is take up space and make me sad the rare times I actually go through it.”