John Grant’s last solo album was 2021’s Boy From Michigan. Last year, the former Czars member released plenty of material, including an LP with his band Creep Show, an EP with Midlake, and a Nick Drake cover. Today, he’s announcing his new record entitled The Art Of The Lie. “It’s A Bitch” is out now.

“It was a blast making this track which is just about having fun with words, synths and dope rhythms and bass lines and also making fun of post-COVID malaise,” Grant said in a statement. “Plus, people get to ponder what a ‘hesher’ is. I loved going to the arcade in the 80s and watching smokin’-hot heshers hold court while playing Tempest, Stargate, Robotron and Asteroids, and while also blasting Iron Maiden and Rush on their Walkmans.”

The Art Of The Lie was produced by Ivor Guest. Grant met the producer in 2022 and admired his work on Grace Jones’ Hurricane and Brigitte Fontaine’s Prohibition. Contributors include Dave Okumu of the Invisible, Robin Mullarkey, Seb Rochford, and Rachel Sermanni.

The personal overlaps with the political on the album, whose title is a reference to Trump’s book, The Art Of The Deal. Grant explained:

This album is in part about the lies people espouse and the brokenness it breeds and how we are warped and deformed by these lies. For example, the Christian Nationalist movement has formed an alliance with White Supremacist groups and together they have taken over the Republican party and see LGBTQ+ people and non-whites as genetically and even mentally inferior and believe all undesirables must be forced either to convert to Christianity and adhere to the teachings of the Bible as interpreted by them or they must be removed in order that purity be restored to ‘their’ nation. They now believe Democracy is not the way to achieve these goals. Any sort of pretence of tolerance that may have seemed to develop over the past several decades has all but vanished. It feels like the U.S. in is free-fall mode.

About the sound, Grant continued:

The first time I heard “Time It’s Time,” the last song on The Colour Of Spring by Talk Talk; or “The Night Of The Swallow” by Kate Bush, on The Dreaming; or some of Jane Siberry’s material on The Speckless Sky or anything by Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance; those were important moments for me in music. And of course there is a bit of the Devo spirit in everything I do in some way or another. There’s a lot of amazing humour in their music but they were also serious as a heart attack. I guess this is one of the important themes in my life; it’s about moments and being able to recognize them and be in them while they are happening in spite of whatever else is going on. It’s being in a taxi, the most normal situation in the world and seeing the grandeur, the sheer weight and majesty of a big city passing by, staring in awe. The absurdity of the world on the outside juxtaposed with the world taking place on the inside. That fascinates me, the ability to capture what it really feels like to be a human.

Hear “It’s A Bitch” below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “All That School For Nothing”
02 “Marbles”
03 “Father”
04 “Mother And Son”
05 “Twistin Scriptures”
06 “Meek AF”
07 “It’s A Bitch”
08 “Daddy”
09 “The Child Catcher”
10 “Laura Lou”
11 “Zeitgeist”

The Art Of The Lie is out 6/14 on [PIAS].