When We Were Young

My new album ‘Burmo’ will be released on CD and streaming platforms on Friday, November 14th 2025 and is available to pre-order now.

I took my time writing and arranging these songs. I wanted to create a world in an album: somewhere melodic and transporting, that would reward anyone kind enough to listen .

It’s deliberately wide-ranging, an album that worships the White Album’s head-spinning variety, and is happy to fall on its face in an attempt to reach for those dizzying heights. At the album’s core is a homage to the classical guitar, an instrument I fell in love with as a child, my gateway drug to everything that has followed.

There are lysergic folk songs - Hazy River pt 1 and Hazy River pt 2 - that are a progression from my previous album… there’s a song suite (the title track) celebrating Morricone, Wings and the classical guitar… there are evocations of Love, Elliott Smith and Pixes on ‘Abalone’; a love letter to The Stone Roses on ‘Palm house’; and an off kilter pop song, channeling early King Crimson that mutates into a shoegaze dub meltdown, ‘Feverfew’.

I wanted to make an album that sounded like finding a shoebox filled with old photos and the flotsam and jetsam of life that I really care about.… a jumble of memories, places, emotions and sounds.

The album is rooted in the Clwydian hills, in memories of Nannerch and Mold, with diversions to Blaenau Ffestiniog, Sefton Park in Liverpool and Caego, on the outskirts of Wrexham.

‘Burmo’ was an insult when I was at the Alun school in Mold in the 80’s. Anything that was deemed uncool was ‘burmo’. It was Clarks Commandos; non-white socks; corduroy trousers; Mike Read; dinner time chess club; Dire Straits instead of The Jam; NHS specs and books instead of comics.

I was ‘burmo’. I still am ‘burmo’… but now - in middle age - it’s glorious to feel unapologetic about it.

The first recording sessions for ‘Burmo’ were in May 2023, with Russ Hayes (Kidsmoke, Peaness, Catfish and the Bottlemen) at Orange Sound Studios in Penmaenmawr. We recorded the live acoustic guitar and vocal takes that are the spine of the album, and then came back to the arrangements once a month to embellish outwards. ‘Burmo’ is a much more fully realised album than anything I’ve released before. A real trip for the ears.

My good friend, Martin Carr - polymath, musical visionary and - in a previous life - the chief songwriter in The Boo Radleys - produced the first half of ‘feverfew’, re-imagining the song as skipping, synth-driven electro. It’s humbling for me that Martin collaborates on the album because The Boo Radley’s 1993 magnum opus ‘Giant Steps’ has been a huge inspiration to me over the last 30+ years.

Rachel Williams - drummer with the fantastic indie pop band Peaness - drums on ‘burmo’, ‘hillside’ and is sampled in the coda of ‘feverfew’.

All other instruments are played by me.

The album is available from all the usual streaming / download outlets from Friday 14th November 2025, and as limited edition gatefold CD (300 copies) from bandcamp.

All songs ©️Adam Walton 2025 (Copyright Control)

Produced by Adam Walton and Russ Hayes.

Engineered, mixed and mastered by Russ Hayes at Orange Sound Studios in Penmaenmawr, May 2022 - September 2025.

Buy on bandcamp

Palm House

Hazy River Pt 2

I You Know

Burmo

Abalone

Hazy River Pt 1

Feverfew

Quirkafleeg

Afal

When We Were Young

iwser

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