Yellow Days talks “surreal” Prince-inspired album ‘Hotel Heaven’: “To make a case for hope, you have to start with why everything is shit”

nme.com:

Yellow Days’ George Van Den Broek has spoken to NME about his new album ‘Hotel Heaven’, the isolating experience of being a Soundcloud sensation, being inspired by Tame Impala and learning to embrace the oddness in his music.‘Hotel Heaven’ was released on Friday (April 5) and is the follow-up to a trilogy of records (‘Inner Peace’, ‘Slow Dance & Romance’ and ‘Apple Pie’) that Yellow Days wrote and recorded during lockdown as a means of escape.

While that music was inspired by frank honesty, ‘Hotel Heaven’ is a “surreal”, otherworldly concept album.“It’s set in a dystopian future where Earth has been destroyed and the rich and famous have escaped to a space cloud called Hotel Heaven, with all the pleasures and luxuries they had before,” explained Van Den Broek. “It was inspired by the conversations about Elon Musk going to Mars.”The record and accompanying music videos also feature a character known as The Concierge. “She’s this foul-mouthed, benevolent character similar to a chorus from a Greek Tragedy of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio,” Van Den Broek explained. “The idea is she’s writing out people’s lives as they live them.

If you were a godlike figure that knew all the horrible things that were happening in the world, you’d probably be jaded too.”A post shared by Yellow Days (@yellowdayss)Van Den Broek continued: “Before this record, I’ve always treated music as biographical storytelling and never spoke about things that weren’t too far removed from the truth.

With ‘Hotel Heaven’, I wanted to play a version of myself.”“It just felt like the right time to really dig into my imagination.