GUV (fka Young Guv) announces new Madchester-inspired album, shares “Let Your Hands Go”

Former Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook has rebranded his solo project Young Guv to GUV. “I’m not so young anymore, three letter band names are cool, and I’m tired of being mistaken for a rapper,” Cook says. The new moniker also comes with a new musical direction for Warmer Than Gold, which will be out January 30 via Run For Cover Records.

Where Young Guv ran more power-pop, with GUV Cook is exploring early ’90s UK indie, from the the rave/baggy scene that gave us Stone Roses, The Charlatans, Screamadelica, and more, to shoegaze and Britpop. Helping him out are Hatchie, Meg Mills of Turnstile, James Matthew Seven, Darcy Baylis, and more.

Cook’s parents are English and he actually grew up between Toronto and the UK, so it’s not as wild a pivot as it might first seem. “My grandmother helped invent the miniskirt in London in the 60’s, my parents met in a squat in Brixton. My dad was the drug dealer, my mom the hippie runaway,” he says. “Growing up, I had a little bit of a Bristol life, it was more like trip-hop and reggae vibes over there when I was young.”

“Warmer Than Gold is about slipping through two worlds. One ruled by luxury and the worship of status, and another that feels like an escape, a dream you can almost touch,” Cook says. “It’s about buses, trains, planes, about big dreams in solitude, finding something real despite everything trying to erase it. It’s about London, my family, everyone I’ve ever and never met. It’s the feeling of infinite movement, the glow of yellow moons over dark oceans, the weight of history pressing against the future.”

The first single from Warmer Than Gold is “Let Your Hands Go,” a kaleidoscopic bongo-and-power-chord number that would fit nicely between Primal Scream’s “Loaded” and Chapterhouse’s “Falling Down.” Watch the video below.

Warmer Than Gold:
1. Let Your Hands Go
2. Blue Jade
3. Warmer Than Gold
4. Thorns In My Heart
5. Out of This Place
6. Chasin Luv
7. Seaside Story
8. Oscillating
9. Hello Miss Blue
10. Never Should Have Said
11. Crash Down Feeling
12. September Grey