The Act: DEAN MCMULLEN

The Song: ‘CLOUDS HOLD UP THE SUN’

The Format: DIGITAL SINGLE

The Release Date: JANUARY 14TH 2022

The Digital Link: deanmuncie.bfan.link/clouds-hold-up-the-sun

The Truth: Dean McMullen is, on one level, a new singer-songwriter who is about to release his debut single on January 14th 2022. By the sounds of things he won’t be charging into the New Year like an enraged bull in an especially fragile china shop, as ‘Clouds Hold Up The Sun’ gently resonates with a childlike sweetness wrapped in lush musical sentiments, lurking somewhere between Elliot Smith and Mercury Rev.

On a second level, the name Dean McMullen might not resonate instantly with the gig-going masses, but the man has deftly clocked up enough motorway miles to flabbergast the average AA man. Raised on a steady diet of punk rock in Exeter – local heroes The Computers were a special teenage kicking delight – and now based in the Netherlands, his is a tale of incessant gigging as guitarist in oft-loved Muncie Girls interspersed with the odd stint on the slightly more salubrious tour bus circuit as tech for the likes of Tim Burgess and Baxter Dury.

Little wonder then that ‘Clouds Hold Up The Sun’ should shimmer and twinkle so coyly, for here is a man stepping out of the shadows of the shadows and putting his supercool soul squarely on the line. Or, as Dean McMullen freely confesses…

“I've been writing songs, whispering along to my guitar as quietly as possible for years so others didn’t stand a chance of hearing what I was up to. I always loved song writing and I don’t know why I felt so uncomfortable with it. I guess I was brought up in a rather stoic English family where any sort of expression, apart from being polite, or any kind of emotion, apart from a polite smile, was uncomfortable.

“Anyway, one grey, London afternoon, when I was sure none of my housemates were in, I sat down on my mattress on the floor and out came ‘Clouds Hold Up The Sun’. Something felt different about the song compared to my previous ones and I was chuffed. Chuffed enough to make a demo of it, chuffed enough to even show it to a few people and then chuffed enough to get completely carried away and vow to write a whole record. Introducing my first solo single, ‘Clouds Hold Up The Sun’.”

Rather excellently, there is a whole album of this stuff already in the can. Carefully produced by Gethin Pearson (Kele Bloc Party, ALMA, whenyoung) with Simon Dobson (Bring Me The Horizon, Parallax Orchestra) on the arrangements it’s a triumphant collection of sweeping melodies and swooping strings – one part pure ‘Snowman & The Snowdog’ escapism, three parts road-tripping reality. It’s a good balance in an off-balance world, and it’s an album which is due out in the summer of 2022.

Dean McMullen kicks off the year with a solo live show which looks something like this:

THURSDAY JANUARY 6TH 2022
LONDON DALSTON THE VICTORIA
ENJOYABLE LISTENS + DEAN MCMULLEN + HOLOCENE
(FREE ENTRY PANDAMONIUM! SHOW)