1. On Each Branch
2. Flowers In The Ruin
3. Together We Lost
4. Truth & Consequences
5. Ever Treat You Cruel Again
6. Days
7. Now We Are Less Afraid
8. Joy Is The Aim
9. Soft Tissue Injury
10. Rain For Roses
11. While We May All
12. Reprise
Hallelujah Trial began in a front room. Tom Roberts (Cranebuilders, Beatowls) and John Canning Yates (Ella Guru) had known each other for twenty years, traded tapes, played the same rooms and released back to back albums on Violette without ever performing a note together. Then Tom sent John three home demos. John sent one back with piano on it, and a weekly ritual took hold: tea, talk and songs knocked into shape with no agenda and no timeline. The pair made their live debut at the final La Violette Società in April 2026, and a few weeks later carried the songs a mile down the road to the Gustav Adolf Church, the Scandinavian seamen's church on the edge of the Baltic Triangle, and recorded this album inside it.
It sounds like the room it was made in. Spacious, stripped back and gloriously melodic, Tom's words and voice at the front, John's piano beneath, storytelling in the lineage of Bill Callahan, Lee Hazlewood and the late Johnny Cash records. The closing 'Reprise' gathers a hallelujah chorus of friends and family under the church ceiling, which is the band's whole idea made audible. "You go through the trial and the outcome is the hallelujah," says Tom. Universal, everyday experience and the small victories.
The sleeve carries a rose adapted from Of the Rose by William Turner, printed in 1568 in the first English herbal, set by Pascal Blua.
The album is pressed in a single edition of 250 copies, on vinyl and only on vinyl. It won't appear on the streaming services and a high-resolution download may follow from the band's Bandcamp in due course. 90 copies went with the people who were in the church for a launch performance. These are the rest, and when they're gone, they're gone.
Tom Roberts - vocals, guitar
John Canning Yates - piano, vocals
Recorded, mixed and produced by John Canning Yates
Mastered by Jason Mitchell
Sleeve design by Pascal Blua
Cover image adapted from Of the Rose by William Turner (1568)
Photography by John Canning Yates and Tom Roberts
© ℗ Hallelujah Trial / Violette Records 2026
All rights reserved
Released 17 October 2026
VIO-088
1. On Each Branch
2. Flowers In The Ruin
3. Together We Lost
4. Truth & Consequences
5. Ever Treat You Cruel Again
6. Days
7. Now We Are Less Afraid
8. Joy Is The Aim
9. Soft Tissue Injury
10. Rain For Roses
11. While We May All
12. Reprise
Hallelujah Trial began in a front room. Tom Roberts (Cranebuilders, Beatowls) and John Canning Yates (Ella Guru) had known each other for twenty years, traded tapes, played the same rooms and released back to back albums on Violette without ever performing a note together. Then Tom sent John three home demos. John sent one back with piano on it, and a weekly ritual took hold: tea, talk and songs knocked into shape with no agenda and no timeline. The pair made their live debut at the final La Violette Società in April 2026, and a few weeks later carried the songs a mile down the road to the Gustav Adolf Church, the Scandinavian seamen's church on the edge of the Baltic Triangle, and recorded this album inside it.
It sounds like the room it was made in. Spacious, stripped back and gloriously melodic, Tom's words and voice at the front, John's piano beneath, storytelling in the lineage of Bill Callahan, Lee Hazlewood and the late Johnny Cash records. The closing 'Reprise' gathers a hallelujah chorus of friends and family under the church ceiling, which is the band's whole idea made audible. "You go through the trial and the outcome is the hallelujah," says Tom. Universal, everyday experience and the small victories.
The sleeve carries a rose adapted from Of the Rose by William Turner, printed in 1568 in the first English herbal, set by Pascal Blua.
The album is pressed in a single edition of 250 copies, on vinyl and only on vinyl. It won't appear on the streaming services and a high-resolution download may follow from the band's Bandcamp in due course. 90 copies went with the people who were in the church for a launch performance. These are the rest, and when they're gone, they're gone.
Tom Roberts - vocals, guitar
John Canning Yates - piano, vocals
Recorded, mixed and produced by John Canning Yates
Mastered by Jason Mitchell
Sleeve design by Pascal Blua
Cover image adapted from Of the Rose by William Turner (1568)
Photography by John Canning Yates and Tom Roberts
© ℗ Hallelujah Trial / Violette Records 2026
All rights reserved
Released 17 October 2026
VIO-088
