Buoyed by the joy of creating their 2022 album – Confidence – The Hoosiers are swaggering back through the saloon doors of the music industry with both barrels locked and loaded. Armed with their sixth album, Irwin Sparkes & Alan Sharland pick up where they left off; honing a more adult take on the jubilant sound that made a name for them back in 2007. Reflections between the duo probed the question of why even bother to make an album – at considerable cost – in an age with scant regard for the form? “The conversation that had been picked up with fans following Confidence had taken on a momentum of its own and we were compelled not to lose something so valuable”, says Irwin. With Compassion, Al & Irwin wished to imbue the listener with this new-found sense of self-belief in what they do and who they are. This time the question of how to focus the album was handled in a novel way: “Releasing an album into the world is like releasing your intentions so we wanted to approach it as if we had a genie offering us one wish”, says Al Sharland. “On a personal and political level, it’s apparent that we could all do with more compassion.”
The way we talk to ourselves influencing how we talk to each other and thereby creating the world in which we live; this tied together the songs already written (‘Everybody Is A Little More Broken Than They Pretend To Be’, and ‘Don’t Hang Your Head’) with those that would be written with the concept of compassion in mind (‘Permission To Rest’). Perhaps where compassion is needed the most is when it comes to people who don’t share our values and this is what the title track ‘Compassion’ is grappling with. “We love playing in this band more than ever and we feel so loved by the fans we have and this album is a big, stanky hug back to them”, clarifies Irwin. “We don’t just want to leave the world with better music than when we found it”, winks Al, “we want to leave it a more confident, compassionate spinning orb.”
