Liam Bailey

Liam Bailey has announced the May 15, 2026 release of his new studio album Shadow Town, marking a new

chapter for one of Britain’s most distinctive voices. The record sees the Nottingham-born, London-based

singer reconnect with his roots as a songwriter, while drawing on the depth and range of a career that has

quietly shaped British soul, reggae and electronic music for over two decades.

I Shadow Town departs from that context to renew a writing partnership with producer Jimmy Hogarth that

is more than a decade in the making.

Hogarth - whose credits include Anohni, Sia, Maverick Sabre, The 1975 and James Blunt - recorded the album

in his Hampstead home studio, capturing Bailey in a deliberately stripped-back and intuitive setting. The

result is a record built around voice, lyric and atmosphere, with arrangements that allow space for subtle

textures rather than overt genre markers.

Guided by Hogarth’s broad riffs and rich textures, the intensity of Shadow Town wraps around Bailey’s patois-

style. Whether it’s the twangy foot-stomper “Northern Lights” or the stripped-down R&B of “Gold,” the two

find inventive ways to adapt the sound to Bailey’s third-generation Jamaican-English identity. It has Bailey

reflecting on another British-born reggae singer in Maxi Priest, and how Priest found commercial success with

a cover of Cat Steven’s “Wild World,” but Bailey feels that creatively the music industry “would never let him

leave reggae.”

“I want to come out of the soundclash, sit down with my acoustic guitar, do that, and then come back to the

soundclash,” Bailey says. “Why not?