Violette Records · VIO-088
The first song from a debut album recorded inside a Liverpool church. Out 17 October.
Hallelujah Trial have released their first single. ‘On Each Branch’ is four minutes of voice, guitar and piano, recorded inside the Gustav Adolf Church on Liverpool’s Park Lane, and it opens a debut album that arrives on Saturday 17 October.
The band is Tom Roberts, who led Cranebuilders and Beatowls, and John Canning Yates, who founded Ella Guru. They had known each other since both bands were working, swapped tapes and played the same rooms on the same nights, and it still took twenty years before either of them suggested sitting down together. Their first performance in public was on 7 April this year, at the last La Violette Società.
The record found its shape by getting stuck. Months of sessions in John’s front room had produced hours of material and no way to choose between it, and going back through everything would’ve taken longer than they had left in them. John suggested the church. Tom set the rule: whatever they got in there would be the record, mistakes and all. The line they borrowed for it, that what happens in the room is the show, started between them as a joke and turned into the idea the album is built around. No reverb was added to any of it. The building did that.
‘On Each Branch’ is a Roberts song written with David McDonnell of The Sand Band, and it was the first one John sent back to Tom with piano on it. John produced and mixed the album. Jason Mitchell mastered it. They had this one on take four.
The album is out on Saturday 17 October in a single pressing of 250 copies on 180g vinyl. There’s no repress, and the album itself won’t be streamed. A second single follows before release.
That evening Tom and John play it end to end in the church where they made it, doors at eight. There’s no ticket. You buy the record at £27.99, the same as it costs anywhere, and it’s handed to you in the room on the night, six days before the post goes out. £37.99 brings someone with you. 70 of the 90 seats have gone.
Hallelujah Trial · VIO-088 · Violette Records
Recorded in residency at the Gustav Adolf Church, Liverpool, April 2026
Produced and mixed by John Canning Yates. Mastered by Jason Mitchell.
Sleeve by Pascal Blua, after ‘Of the Rose’, William Turner, 1568
Launch: The Scandinavian Church, 138 Park Lane, Liverpool L1 8HG, Saturday 17 October 2026, doors 8.00pm