Professor Yaffle - 'Everyone Wants to Dream'
1. On Top of the World
2. Everyone Wants to Dream
3. A Whispering (Amid the River Reeds)
4. Come Fly With Me
5. Lost in a Dream (On Everton Brow)
6. The City Bells
7. It All Come Tumbling Down
8. Every Day of My Life
There's a vantage point in Liverpool that tourists rarely find. Everton Brow offers no bronze plaques or heritage trails, just an elevated patch of ground that happens to provide the city's finest view. From here, the Mersey stretches toward Snowdonia in the distance, where peaks catch snow like captured light. It's the sort of place that becomes significant not for what it is, but for what it allows you to see.
For Lee Rogers, this unremarkable rise has become something like a creative compass. Three songs on Professor Yaffle's new album Everyone Wants to Dream explicitly reference Everton Brow, while the rest orbit around it like satellites. 'The view is the best,' Lee explains, 'looking out over the Mersey bay and beyond to Snowdonia with the peaks covered in snow.'
The album arrives as Professor Yaffle reaches that particular moment when looking backward is about mapping the territory that made them. Following previous releases Cosmic Lullabies (2017), A Brand New Morning (2019), Moments of Clarity (2020) and Let There Be Light (2022) this new collection feels especially focused and expansive, wrestling with the peculiar sensation that time is somehow accelerating while offering fewer clear destinations.
Lee remembers going to Everton Brow as a teenager and in his early twenties - it was his escape, somewhere to think, sometimes to smoke a joint and look out over the city. Those memories have turned into songs that show how you can feel deeply connected to a place while also feeling completely lost in it. 'Lost in a Dream (On Everton Brow)' does something clever - Lee took lyrics he wrote when he was eighteen and put them to music he's written now, with strings that feel like they're pulling something out of the past rather than adding new decoration.
The album's title track confronts the disorientation of middle age, when children grow and purpose suddenly becomes less defined. 'It's about getting older, and your children getting older, and maybe finding yourself a little rudderless for the first time in twenty odd years as your role in life changes again,' Rogers observes. The song recognises dreaming not as indulgence but as necessity, a human response to uncertainty and the weight of experience.
'On Top of the World' attempts what Lee calls his own version of a 'Waterloo Sunset' type tune, 'Yet also knowing that I couldn't get anywhere near it!' This self-awareness prevents the song from collapsing under the weight of its ambitions. Instead, it becomes what it is: a stoned love letter to Liverpool, sent from Everton Brow, specific in its references and honest about its intentions.
Perhaps most revealing is 'It All Come Tumbling Down', which sets the darkness of panic attacks against unexpectedly cheerful music. Lee recounts anxiety from his twenties, but does so to 'a nice jolly tune'. The juxtaposition captures something essential about how our most difficult moments refuse to conform to the dramatic soundtracks we might like to assign them, and how our struggles often feels strangely disconnected from circumstances.
John Edge contributes two songs to the collection, including 'The City Bells', which fits seamlessly into the album's exploration of place and time. The collaborative approach reflects Professor Yaffle's broader methodology - an understanding that individual experience, however personal, gains great resonance as part of a collective navigation through similar terrain.
The partnership with Violette Records represents what both parties describe as a natural convergence rather than a strategic decision. 'We've circled each other for years,' explains Violette's Matt Lockett, 'moving in the same Liverpool streets, nodding across crowded venues, sharing late conversations that seemed to lead nowhere and everywhere all at once.'
Everyone Wants to Dream will be released in Autumn 2025. For Professor Yaffle and Violette Records, the collaboration represents something that was destined to happen at the right moment - on unremarkable hills, in unguarded conversations, in the patient recognition that some things cannot be forced into existence but must be allowed to arrive when ready.
From Everton Brow, you can see everything that matters. Sometimes that's exactly the perspective you need.
All words and music written by Lee Rogers
except tracks 3 and 6, written by John Edge
Recorded at Upholland Recording Studio
Produced by Michael Holcroft, Dan Brownrigg, Lee Rogers and Jon Humphreys
Mastered by Michael Holcroft
Artwork and Design by Pascal Blua
© ℗ Professor Yaffle / Violette Records 2025
All rights reserved
Released September 2025
Limited Edition 200 only
A special signed, numbered print from the band with every Pre Order
VIO-084
1. On Top of the World
2. Everyone Wants to Dream
3. A Whispering (Amid the River Reeds)
4. Come Fly With Me
5. Lost in a Dream (On Everton Brow)
6. The City Bells
7. It All Come Tumbling Down
8. Every Day of My Life
There's a vantage point in Liverpool that tourists rarely find. Everton Brow offers no bronze plaques or heritage trails, just an elevated patch of ground that happens to provide the city's finest view. From here, the Mersey stretches toward Snowdonia in the distance, where peaks catch snow like captured light. It's the sort of place that becomes significant not for what it is, but for what it allows you to see.
For Lee Rogers, this unremarkable rise has become something like a creative compass. Three songs on Professor Yaffle's new album Everyone Wants to Dream explicitly reference Everton Brow, while the rest orbit around it like satellites. 'The view is the best,' Lee explains, 'looking out over the Mersey bay and beyond to Snowdonia with the peaks covered in snow.'
The album arrives as Professor Yaffle reaches that particular moment when looking backward is about mapping the territory that made them. Following previous releases Cosmic Lullabies (2017), A Brand New Morning (2019), Moments of Clarity (2020) and Let There Be Light (2022) this new collection feels especially focused and expansive, wrestling with the peculiar sensation that time is somehow accelerating while offering fewer clear destinations.
Lee remembers going to Everton Brow as a teenager and in his early twenties - it was his escape, somewhere to think, sometimes to smoke a joint and look out over the city. Those memories have turned into songs that show how you can feel deeply connected to a place while also feeling completely lost in it. 'Lost in a Dream (On Everton Brow)' does something clever - Lee took lyrics he wrote when he was eighteen and put them to music he's written now, with strings that feel like they're pulling something out of the past rather than adding new decoration.
The album's title track confronts the disorientation of middle age, when children grow and purpose suddenly becomes less defined. 'It's about getting older, and your children getting older, and maybe finding yourself a little rudderless for the first time in twenty odd years as your role in life changes again,' Rogers observes. The song recognises dreaming not as indulgence but as necessity, a human response to uncertainty and the weight of experience.
'On Top of the World' attempts what Lee calls his own version of a 'Waterloo Sunset' type tune, 'Yet also knowing that I couldn't get anywhere near it!' This self-awareness prevents the song from collapsing under the weight of its ambitions. Instead, it becomes what it is: a stoned love letter to Liverpool, sent from Everton Brow, specific in its references and honest about its intentions.
Perhaps most revealing is 'It All Come Tumbling Down', which sets the darkness of panic attacks against unexpectedly cheerful music. Lee recounts anxiety from his twenties, but does so to 'a nice jolly tune'. The juxtaposition captures something essential about how our most difficult moments refuse to conform to the dramatic soundtracks we might like to assign them, and how our struggles often feels strangely disconnected from circumstances.
John Edge contributes two songs to the collection, including 'The City Bells', which fits seamlessly into the album's exploration of place and time. The collaborative approach reflects Professor Yaffle's broader methodology - an understanding that individual experience, however personal, gains great resonance as part of a collective navigation through similar terrain.
The partnership with Violette Records represents what both parties describe as a natural convergence rather than a strategic decision. 'We've circled each other for years,' explains Violette's Matt Lockett, 'moving in the same Liverpool streets, nodding across crowded venues, sharing late conversations that seemed to lead nowhere and everywhere all at once.'
Everyone Wants to Dream will be released in Autumn 2025. For Professor Yaffle and Violette Records, the collaboration represents something that was destined to happen at the right moment - on unremarkable hills, in unguarded conversations, in the patient recognition that some things cannot be forced into existence but must be allowed to arrive when ready.
From Everton Brow, you can see everything that matters. Sometimes that's exactly the perspective you need.
All words and music written by Lee Rogers
except tracks 3 and 6, written by John Edge
Recorded at Upholland Recording Studio
Produced by Michael Holcroft, Dan Brownrigg, Lee Rogers and Jon Humphreys
Mastered by Michael Holcroft
Artwork and Design by Pascal Blua
© ℗ Professor Yaffle / Violette Records 2025
All rights reserved
Released September 2025
Limited Edition 200 only
A special signed, numbered print from the band with every Pre Order
VIO-084
1. On Top of the World
2. Everyone Wants to Dream
3. A Whispering (Amid the River Reeds)
4. Come Fly With Me
5. Lost in a Dream (On Everton Brow)
6. The City Bells
7. It All Come Tumbling Down
8. Every Day of My Life
There's a vantage point in Liverpool that tourists rarely find. Everton Brow offers no bronze plaques or heritage trails, just an elevated patch of ground that happens to provide the city's finest view. From here, the Mersey stretches toward Snowdonia in the distance, where peaks catch snow like captured light. It's the sort of place that becomes significant not for what it is, but for what it allows you to see.
For Lee Rogers, this unremarkable rise has become something like a creative compass. Three songs on Professor Yaffle's new album Everyone Wants to Dream explicitly reference Everton Brow, while the rest orbit around it like satellites. 'The view is the best,' Lee explains, 'looking out over the Mersey bay and beyond to Snowdonia with the peaks covered in snow.'
The album arrives as Professor Yaffle reaches that particular moment when looking backward is about mapping the territory that made them. Following previous releases Cosmic Lullabies (2017), A Brand New Morning (2019), Moments of Clarity (2020) and Let There Be Light (2022) this new collection feels especially focused and expansive, wrestling with the peculiar sensation that time is somehow accelerating while offering fewer clear destinations.
Lee remembers going to Everton Brow as a teenager and in his early twenties - it was his escape, somewhere to think, sometimes to smoke a joint and look out over the city. Those memories have turned into songs that show how you can feel deeply connected to a place while also feeling completely lost in it. 'Lost in a Dream (On Everton Brow)' does something clever - Lee took lyrics he wrote when he was eighteen and put them to music he's written now, with strings that feel like they're pulling something out of the past rather than adding new decoration.
The album's title track confronts the disorientation of middle age, when children grow and purpose suddenly becomes less defined. 'It's about getting older, and your children getting older, and maybe finding yourself a little rudderless for the first time in twenty odd years as your role in life changes again,' Rogers observes. The song recognises dreaming not as indulgence but as necessity, a human response to uncertainty and the weight of experience.
'On Top of the World' attempts what Lee calls his own version of a 'Waterloo Sunset' type tune, 'Yet also knowing that I couldn't get anywhere near it!' This self-awareness prevents the song from collapsing under the weight of its ambitions. Instead, it becomes what it is: a stoned love letter to Liverpool, sent from Everton Brow, specific in its references and honest about its intentions.
Perhaps most revealing is 'It All Come Tumbling Down', which sets the darkness of panic attacks against unexpectedly cheerful music. Lee recounts anxiety from his twenties, but does so to 'a nice jolly tune'. The juxtaposition captures something essential about how our most difficult moments refuse to conform to the dramatic soundtracks we might like to assign them, and how our struggles often feels strangely disconnected from circumstances.
John Edge contributes two songs to the collection, including 'The City Bells', which fits seamlessly into the album's exploration of place and time. The collaborative approach reflects Professor Yaffle's broader methodology - an understanding that individual experience, however personal, gains great resonance as part of a collective navigation through similar terrain.
The partnership with Violette Records represents what both parties describe as a natural convergence rather than a strategic decision. 'We've circled each other for years,' explains Violette's Matt Lockett, 'moving in the same Liverpool streets, nodding across crowded venues, sharing late conversations that seemed to lead nowhere and everywhere all at once.'
Everyone Wants to Dream will be released in Autumn 2025. For Professor Yaffle and Violette Records, the collaboration represents something that was destined to happen at the right moment - on unremarkable hills, in unguarded conversations, in the patient recognition that some things cannot be forced into existence but must be allowed to arrive when ready.
From Everton Brow, you can see everything that matters. Sometimes that's exactly the perspective you need.
All words and music written by Lee Rogers
except tracks 3 and 6, written by John Edge
Recorded at Upholland Recording Studio
Produced by Michael Holcroft, Dan Brownrigg, Lee Rogers and Jon Humphreys
Mastered by Michael Holcroft
Artwork and Design by Pascal Blua
© ℗ Professor Yaffle / Violette Records 2025
All rights reserved
Released September 2025
Limited Edition 200 only
A special signed, numbered print from the band with every Pre Order
VIO-084
