Dan O'Farrell & The Difference Engine
PRE-ORDER: This item will be shipped with the aim to deliver on release day.
Release Date: 23 January 2026
Label: Gare Du Nord
Packaging Type: Slip Sleeve (CD or Vinyl)
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 619091684435
Description
Formed from the ashes of John Peel-endorsed indie-band Accrington Stanley. Dan O'Farrell & The Difference Engine's fourth album (recorded and produced by Andy Lewis) arrives at the start of 2026 like a cold, sharp bucket of water in the face. Bracing and troubling - like a tongue returning to a sore tooth - these songs probe life's dark waters: loss of family, faith, community & self-confidence - but also remains empathetic and rousing, ultimately cathartic. Once you've scraped the bottom, the only way is up. Creation is always an act of joyful defiance.
Based in Southampton, and formed from the ashes of John Peel-endorsed indie-band Accrington Stanley, the band bring layers of warmth and subtlety to the uncompromisingly lyrical alt-folk songs of Dan O'Farrell, English-teacher by day and angry, leftist complainer by night.
The songs take a zig-zagging tour of the narrator's struggles with life, 'maturity' and the joys of middle-age. Opener Heartbreak Hostel was 'written for Elvis Presley, but he never got back to us'. In The Colonial Club the personal angst becomes political - a gammon-baiting response to the pearl-clutching horror of the right to the sight of statues of slave-owners being chucked in the sea. Racing through the Dexy's-inspired passionate danger of 'Cyanide Desire' , - why do the things we love always have to kill us? - we land on the spiritual treatise of God Etc. 'I let Jesus take the wheel...he drove me off a cliff'. Like all lapsed cradle-Catholics, O'Farrell experiences the push-pull of his religious upbringing, searching for meaning as he tries to become as 'nakedly human' as possible. Side one ends with the double-whammy of Sunny Weather and Alarm, the first a Groucho Marx-quoting jazz-breeze where the narrator struggles to just chill in the sun - for gods sake!- and the second a pretty, shimmering exploration of how hard it is to communicate with the ones we love.
The album's second half starts with another dose of dark humour: Hang Me On The Wall takes masochistic joy in imagining a series of life-ending scenarios, with co-vocalist Rick Foot getting all the best lines. The album's two 'cornerstone' tracks are positioned carefully on side two. Track 2 ( or 7 on the CD), Loss tries to deal with the grief that hits us all - the howl of pain that emerges at the end of the song probably saying as much as all the preceding lyrics. Track 4 (10), Goodbye, returns to the theme of loneliness and miscommunication - the universal ache - yet the music soars. Sandwiched between these two party-anthems (!) comes the album's poppiest track, Asbestos Love, a slightly demented paean to global-warming. The album's closing tracks - The Fish That Learned To Drown and Ursa Minor - complete the arc, and - finally - offer some hope of struggle and growth, and then redemption and self-acceptance.
The album will be launched at Heartbreakers in Southampton on 24th January, 2026
Tracklisting
Ben Reed
Dan O'Farrell & The Difference Engine
Melanie Crew and Ross Palmer
Alex Marker & Ben Reed
Trent Miller
Papernut Cambridge
Papernut Cambridge
The Last of The Lovely Days
Jim Ghedi
Various Artists
VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Mon
SHACK
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood
MYRIAM GENDRON
Me Lost Me
