The Apartments

After five years The Apartments return with their seventh studio album In And Out Of The Light, out today via Riley Records.

Recorded in the summer of 2019, you would be forgiven for thinking the songs were written in response to the turmoil of 2020. On In And Out Of The Light, Peter Milton Walsh does what he does best, impressionistic storytelling that speaks to universal feelings and situations.

The songs follow a set of characters who, in the aftermath of loss or simply the changes that turn up in everyone's lives, have gone looking for some other way to live"and found it. Stories with the texture of this experience float through the intimate, reflective songs on the album. Here are eight tracks to get lost in"for a day, for a week, for a lifetime.

'Pocketful Of Sunshine' and 'What's Beauty To Do?' - the two singles off the album - have been received with praise by press across the world with Rolling Stone describing 'What's Beauty to Do?' as "[it] captures the essence of what makes Walsh such an acclaimed, with his stunning delivery and strangely poignant lyrics making the single feel as though it was one written for the times the world finds itself in." And Backseat Mafia on 'Pocketful Of Sunshine' - "this might just be the most beautiful song of the year".

In And Out Of The Light was recorded across continents with Walsh and bass player Eliot Fish working with producer Tim Kevin in his Marrickville studio in Sydney, while the French Apartments' members, Natasha Penot and Antoine Chaperon, recording their parts in various studios in France, and English drummer Nick Allum working in London. Chris Abrahams from The Necks also features on the album with track 'We Talked Through Till Dawn' recorded in a single take between Abrahams and Walsh. 

Peter Milton Walsh formed The Apartments in the Summer of 1978 in Brisbane, Australia. That same summer, The Apartments singer/songwriter Peter Walsh also played lead guitar with The Go-Betweens, when they'd been offered an 8 album contract by Beserkley Records, home of Jonathan Richman. With the Beserkley deal falling through, Walsh left The Go Betweens who affectionately commemorated him with their next single, 'Don't Let Him Come Back'. Grant McLennan famously said of their different personalities "Walsh is night, we are day. We're sun, he's rain."

After leaving Australia for New York a few years later, Peter Milton Walsh then relocated to England after The Apartments were signed by legendary English record label Rough Trade. During the years of exile and the albums which followed, The Apartments developed an intense, devoted following throughout Europe and America. The Apartments' single, 'The Shyest Time', was scooped up by the maestro of American teen movies, John Hughes for his Some Kind of Wonderful, remixed by Stephen Hague, producer of the Pet Shop Boys and New Order.
As the Eighties came to a close, Walsh returned to his birthplace, Sydney, and began playing as The Apartments, this time with Ed Kuepper on guitar. In late 1992, The Apartments' second album, 'drift' was recorded for the Dirty Three's first label, Torn & Frayed.

A string of albums followed in quick succession"'A Life Full Of Farewells' in 1995, 'fête foraine' in 1996 and 'apart' in 1997. The run of albums came to a halt in 1997 when Walsh's young son was hospitalised in 1997 with a serious illness. With the death of his son in 1999, Walsh stopped The Apartments, withdrawing entirely from public life.

In 2015, The Apartments surprised fans by reemerging " after over a decade of silence " with No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal, an album that saw a new audience drawn to The Apartments' music. By year's end, readers and critics of French music magazine Magic named No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal #1 Album of The Year.