Band Cigar Cigar to release debut album and single – with videos created by Northern College of Art students

Teesside band Cigar Cigar will be dropping its first single, Warsaw Skyline, on Valentine’s Day – just months before releasing its debut album later in the spring.

Russell Smith, 42, from Hartlepool, Nick Colman, 27, from Skelton, and brothers Neil and Mark Brodie, 42, from Middlesbrough, formed the band four years ago and started working on an album two years later.

Lead singer and guitarist Russell Smith has said the debut single is already available to pre-order and has been selling “really well”.

Russell said: “The pre-sell figures are excellent. It’s certainly going in the right direction.“

Speaking of the song, Russell added: "It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy set in the Polish capital. It’s so uplifting and it moves so well and it carries such a body of hope and love, we thought there was no other day we could put it out than Valentine’s Day.”

It will be followed by the release of LP ‘The Edge of the Conversation’ in April. The album has 12 songs in total, opening with six uplifting tracks, before turning “dark and melancholic” in the remaining six songs.

Each song has a corresponding music video, created by students at the Northern School of Arts and the films will be released in the coming weeks.

Russell said: "It’s almost like a retrospective of life growing up in the North of England in that I always say it takes you to some places that you wish you’d never gone to, but it also takes you to some places you wish you could never leave.

"The ongoing element throughout the whole LP is hope. That no matter how dark and how bad it gets, there is always hope.”

Russell, who owns an art gallery, started playing the guitar when he was 13.

"I was always a complete music obsessive. I used to listen to an awful lot of Motown with my mum,” he said.

The musician has added that he hopes the band – who self-funded the majority of the album - will be able to continue making “honest music” and is planning shows in the UK and across Europe.

You can follow the band on Instagram at cigarcigarmusic.

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