King Krule Announces New Album Man Alive!, Shares New Music Video and Tour Dates

The third studio album from British lo-fi songwriter Archie Ivan Marshall, better known by his stage name King Krule, is set for release by True Panther/Matador Records on Feb. 21.

Titled Man Alive!, the album is a meditation on slacker ennui, which consumed Marshall in the wake of creating the album.

“There really is nothing else to do here, especially when it turns to winter,” said Marshall in a statement. “Everyone I know has jobs, whereas I’d sit on my arse all day sometimes not doing anything, then I’d go to the pub with them when they finished work. It became a bit habitual.”

Along with announcing the album, Marshall has also released a self-directed music video for the track “(Don’t Let The Dragon) Draag On.” It’s lushly cinematic, seemingly an homage to the Carl Theodore Dreyer film The Passion of Joan of Arc, with a black-and-white continuous shot of Marshall being burned at the stake.

But many of the album’s themes involving directionless-ness and monotony are no longer lived realities for Marshall. Last March, the 25-year-old officially became a father with the birth of his daughter, Marina.

“I feel better in life. I don’t drink or smoke when I’m in the North West, so I’m pretty clean,” said Marshall. “It’s made me kind of bored of what a lot of the album’s talking about! It’s hard to know where it’s going now I’ve done it, and what I’ll do next, because of my new-found role and responsibility in the world. It’ll be good to play live, I’m looking forward to that.”