My house in Budapest, my hidden treasure chest, golden grand piano, my beautiful castillo,” sings Ezra on Budapest, the song he first put online as a free download last September that has since come to define his rapid rise from Bristol-based hopeful to chart-straddling star in waiting. In little more than six months, the song has been streamed more than ten million times on Spotify and almost five million times on YouTube, and taken root in the top 10 on iTunes in Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Hungary. And yet Ezra still hasn’t ever been to Budapest: “It was starting to get a bit silly,” he says. “It was all I was getting asked for a while. So I thought, if I’m going to go, i’m going to have to make a thing of it.” George Ezra today announces a major European tour for October-December, on the day he starts the Ezra Express, his four-day European rail odyssey from his home in Bristol to his “house in Budapest”. The autumn tour starts in Madrid on 10 October and currently finishes in Oslo on 4 December, taking in 23 shows across the continent. See overleaf for the full list of new shows, alongside his forthcoming June dates. Budapest is lifted from Ezra’s forthcoming eagerly anticipated debut album, Wanted On Voyage, due for release on 30 June via Columbia Records in digital, CD and gatefold vinyl formats.
Wanted On Voyage was recorded between early November and mid January in Clapham, south London with producer Cam Blackwood. Ezra plays guitar, bass and keyboards on the album. With its ‘What are you waiting for?’ refrain, album opener Blame It On Me, set to a skiffle shuffle, sums up the singer’s mantra of just getting on with the job, while Listen To The Man is a woozy, bluesy, summery-sounding lesson in self belief. Sonically, Wanted on Voyage’s most surprising song is the electronica-driven Stand By Your Gun, which could be The Blue Nile doing disco.
A lyrical wit rarely seen in his contemporaries runs throughout, none more so than on Drawing Board, a fantasy retaliation aimed at an ex when a relationship goes sour. “It’s definitely a fun sounding album,” says Ezra. “Probably because it was such fun to make.”
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