Cosmic Crooner Releases His Sophomore Album ‘European Vacation’ - And It Has The Potential To Be Album of The Year

The Casanova of cool returns with his most flirtatious and exhilarating project to date as he transports you through a European Vacation of love and heartbreak.  

European Vacation positions you in a small town, in a quiet part of the world, where you sip sangrias by a swimming pool while the sun lightly kisses your face, smiling as you forget about things that once consumed you. 

Tapping into his love for Brazilian music, progressive soul from the 70s and jazz, you’re consumed by something else on this carefully created masterpiece as he formulates a soundtrack that will have you smiling, weeping and believing yourself to be a James Bond-esque figure who effortlessly attracts fortune and success, with Crooner’s melodies as your theme. 

The project encompasses musical mastery from Crooner, who is an adroit enigma by cultivating each song so perfectly that the storyline of the album ebbs and flows along a river of nostalgia. 

Crooner, speaking about the process of creating the base of the album in four days said: “I really loved those four days. We’d start at 10am and record until 2am. I was very hyper and, because it was going so well, I wasn’t exhausted, not at all. The weather was lovely, we’d go to the sea to swim after two or three songs…. It was an even better experience than I’d expected.”

The production value is key in this album's charming narrative. Crooner has included an expansive string orchestra that provide the cloth for this soundtrack. What they add completes the full imaginative backdrop of this fictional journey. The outro to ‘Rebeculla’ encapsulates a feeling of euphoria which becomes bottled in your memory to recall in times of hardship. Through each distinctive element, you live and feel every moment

Crooner also adopts many forms in this album and creates genuine characters in the process, but Crooner oozes pazazz, he is ultimately the main man on the scene. The opening ‘Never Wear Your Own Merch’ embraces swinging, rhythmic percussion, as Crooner becomes a jazz star, and we, his adoring fans. 

Films are also a big inspiration for this project, which is natural when songs like ‘Mosquito In The Photobooth’ and ‘The Balcony’ are so rich in creating their own visual identity. An admirer of Italian and French cinema of the 1960s and 70s, like a good film, this album whisks you to a dreamy paradise. 

That’s why he has directed the videos for ‘European Vacation’ too - a series of perfectly curated 16mm films whose stories are interlinked.

For anyone lucky enough to hear his debut album, 2023’s ‘The Perks Of Being A Hypocrite’, showcases Cosmic Crooner’s ability to stand apart from current fads to instead carry people with him into a vivid, luxurious landscape, along with a raconteur’s wit, which was there from the outset. It’s even more realised on ‘European Vacation’. 

Neil Hannon reborn, he extenuates shades of Divine Comedy with his clever lyrical wordplay in tracks like ‘Private Club’, stating “Your heart is a private club and I’m dying to become a member.” Mixed with the tone of Alex Turner, this extraordinary figure delivers style over substance, music as mise-en-scene.  

A sexy, bodacious, present but also timeless ride, we will all feel like hopeless romantics after listening to European Vacation.

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