GULP announce third album with 'Hope Shines Through The Haar'
GULP return to announce a third album, Beneath Strawberry Moons and UK live dates with new single:
HOPE SHINES THROUGH THE HAAR
“An amalgam of 21st-century electronic squiggles and vintage airy psych-folk” - SPIN
“Psych-tinged but pop-leaning” - The Line Of Best Fit
“The Wicker Man getting fresh with Nancy Sinatra” – The Guardian
“Psychedelic, synth-infused sounds” – DIY Magazine
“Lovely sunshine pop” – Brooklyn Vegan
GULP – Hope Shines Through The Haar – OUT NOW
From the album: Beneath Strawberry Moons
Released Fri 29 August 2025 on ELK Records
Pre-Orders: https://lnk.to/beneathstrawberrymoons
VIDEO / AUDIO
Wind-tousled life on the east coast of Scotland, the unhurried cultivation of sound and the warm feeling that everything might be alright in the end combine to enchant on Gulp’s latest single, Hope Shines Through The Haar. Shimmering into view as the band announces a third album, Beneath Strawberry Moons, the combined inspirations of Lindsey Leven and Guto Pryce are supplemented by the musicianship of Andrew Wasylyk as the stomach-butterflies of optimism flutter around the lapping foams of the band’s ethereal, folkish psych-pop.
Supporting the album and bringing their back catalogue back to purposely intimate venues, the band also announces a run of just four live dates this September, opening at Glad Café in Glasgow (Fri 5 September) and concluding at the Golden Lion in Todmorden (Sat 13 September).
Musician and multi-media artist, Leven rejoins Pryce, who traces faintly around the simmering offbeat sounds of his life as a Super Furry Animal (as well as part of Das Koolies and The Pictish Trail), and supporting bandmates, Gid Goundrey (guitar) and Stuart Kidd (drums), for Gulp’s third album. The nine-track Beneath Strawberry Moons, released on Fri 29 August 2025 via ELK Records, follows their 2014 debut, Season Sun, released with Sonic Cathedral and the acclaimed All Good Wishes, which arrived four years later.
Extending the gestation of a complete, new collection of work to seven years, accounting for the pair’s relocation from Pryce’s native Cardiff, Beneath Strawberry Moons emerges as a minimal-carbon-footprint, hyperlocal album, created amongst friends with no deadlines between Piggery Studio and the duo’s garden cabin in North East Fife.
Describing their surrounds as ‘idyllic’ and responding artistically to the significant life change that has brought energy and release, Leven describes the album as “in the most part a love letter to this new way of life”, celebrating space, love, connection and time, cut with an underlying awareness of the fragility of this beauty. Having leaked new material, the cinematic showdown of Always So Far, back in May, the choice of Hope Shines Through The Haar as Gulp’s first single since 2018 links the pair’s delicately charged sense of abundant possibility, Scotland’s heritage and their bracing proximity to the sea.
The single’s video was produced by Donald Milne, the Dundee-based artist behind Pulp’s era-defining Different Class album artwork. The product of a friendship that began in The Fisherman’s Tavern in Broughty Ferry and became a collaboration with photography on Gulp’s last campaign, the video was filmed on a North East Fife beach during the evening’s Golden Hour.
Leven reflects on the single:
“I couldn’t ignore the history we are living through whilst writing the lyrics for this album, even if they exist mainly as almost subliminal in the background. ‘Haar’ is a Scottish word for sea mist. We get a lot of it where we live. If we can all look out for each other, we can look for that glimmer through the Haar. Here is hoping.”
With Wasylyk contributing Rhodes piano and mellotron to the track, the path for Gulp’s third, semi-organic long-player picks up where the band left off, working into Leven’s hazy vocals with familiar-to-the-ear forms of vintage instrumentation blurring into their savvy, 21st Century studiocraft. Released on limited edition vinyl, CD and digital formats, Beneath Strawberry Moons was mixed by Luke Abbott and, in connecting effortlessly with the rhythm of the cosmos, declared complete on the date of planetary alignment in February 2025.
Continuing into his 32nd year as a Super Furry Animal and professional musician, Pryce’s reluctance to sing on record had remained steadfast until the recording of Beneath Strawberry Moons, where his vocals appear for the very first time, joining Leven as co-lead on Summer Storm. Additional musicians playing on the album include trumpeter, Rachel Simpson and trusted friend and long-serving Furries’ percussionist, Kris Jenkins.
Gulp have confirmed the track listing for Beneath Strawberry Moons as follows:
1. Sea Bear
2. Always So Far
3. Salt Years
4. Hope Shines Through The Haar
5. The Way We Live
6. Wildflower
7. Summer Storm
8. Someday In A City
9. Ultramarine Blue
Hitting the road for the first time since 2017’s International Festival of Psychedelia in Liverpool, all of Gulp’s upcoming live dates are confirmed as:
Fri 5 Sep: Glasgow, Glad Cafe
Sat 6 Sep – Dunfermline, Outwith Festival
Fri 12 Sep – Bethesda, Ara Deg Festival
Sat 13 Sep – Todmorden, Golden Lion
Connect with Gulp online for further information and future announcements:
https://www.instagram.com/gulpworld
https://www.facebook.com/gulpmusic
https://bsky.app/profile/gulpworld.bsky.social
https://x.com/gulpworld
