The Purple Book

29 May

Hi, I’m Shaun.

I try keep things very simple. Music. Family. Dogs 💜… cats are ok.
I’m releasing my fourth album, The Purple Book, this October.
The album will be released on vinyl and digital, and the first single, "If There’s an End," is set to arrive on August 15.
The launch happens at The Jade on October 24, right before I turn 40, and I’ll be playing the entire record live with the Shaun and Friends Band.

I’m most excited about sharing the first single, ‘If there’s an end. It’s the first time I’ve written a song that’s addressing myself, not the audience. It emerged during the last album, but I wasn’t ready for it yet. Now I am. And it’s a serious chat.

The moments that have shaped me most haven’t been the biggest stages- they’ve been the ones where something honest landed, and that’s what I’m chasing in The Purple Book.

The Music that made me

This album leans into the authenticity of where I was and where I am, with hopes it’ll make where I am going clearer. My musical influences for this work stem as close to Steven Wilson, Opeth, Filter and as far as the soundtracks of Hans Zimmer, with the heavy lyrics of Fink and moments intersecting with the sounds I hear in my head. With this album, most of it came fully formed before I ever touched an instrument to find a home for the music.
I let it build, more organically this time, which gives it a less polished and more raw feel.

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Why Call it the Purple Book?

While studying psychotherapy years ago, I came across Jung’s Red Book. It was messy, hand-drawn, and unapologetically inward. It was something I resonated with. I didn’t relate to the symbols so much as the process, and while I wasn’t quite sure at the time exactly what I was resonating with, looking back, it was Jung’s willingness to look inward, even when it’s uncomfortable. Something that perhaps only comes with a little bit of discomfort and age.

The Purple Book was made from grief, error, love, therapy, tension, and learning from reflection. My dad is a bit of a collector, coins, stamps, cars, and Ford shirts. Among this extensive nuts and bolts collections, he had been quietly mapping my journey in music from those early high school days to now, it’s a big, handmade Purple scrapbook. Opening it, realising how richly layered with history, mess, and memory now held in my hands, as I these pages turned these pages, I realised why I resonated with the Red Book so much.

While at first glance one may think this Purple scrapbook is overly curated or polished,carefully put together by someone who cares deeply for me, but to me it’s a record of necessary and inevitable mistakes, discoveries, and quiet momentum. There are posters to my first shows with my first, second, and third bands, ticket stubs from shows that my parents never missed, photos and articles from my first international contracts, and there are things I would also rather forget.

That scrapbook and this Purple Book album have become a kind of metaphor.