City And Colour, aka Alexisonfire alumni/singer-songwriter Dallas Green, released his new studio album last week, The Hurry And The Harm, and ahead of the album’s release Green had indicated his strong interest in touring the album Down Under.

As previously reported, Green was keen on hitting our shores as soon as possible, aiming for a tour as early as January next year, “I would hope to say that it would be the first month of the new year, because I have a whole bunch of touring booked already for the rest of this year,” said the City And Colour main man and Aussie favourite.

“I would come there tomorrow (if I could) because I love it so much. So I hope it’s in January, and we’ll leave it at that.” A January visit had him pegged for a Big Day Out appearance, but as Green bluntly told Triple J Breakfast hosts Tom & Alex recently, “It turns out that the people doing Big Day Out didn’t end up wanting City & Colour to be on it;” saying bookers had “overlooked” his interest in touring with the multi-date Aussie festival staple.

Despite the festival snub, Green admitted to Triple J that he and his band would “prefer to do our own tour anyway,” to begin exploring other options of getting the Canadian collective to Australia, it appears that progress has moved swiftly, as Green took to Twitter with a question for his Australian fans:

A potential July visit would mark Green’s first visit to the country since the two farewell shows with his former band, Canadian post-hardcore outfit Alexisonfire, but more specifically for City And Colour, his first Australian shows since touring as part of Groovin’ The Moo 2012.

Coincidentally, Green recently revealed that ‘Thirst’, the lead single from The Hurry And The Harm, was originally written for another act sharing the 2012 Groovin’ The Moo bill, namely NZ-via-Melbourne neo-soulstress Kimbra.

“It was for Kimbra. When you listen to it, there’s things about the vocal lines that you can tell I was thinking about her singing it,” said Green, originally approached by the singer’s record label, Warner, for the song. “I’d never attempted to write something for someone else… I surprised myself. But as time went on we never really heard anything back about it and I started liking the song a bit, as my own.”

As it turns out, Kimbra never even got the chance to know she’d missed out on adding a Dallas Green-penned tune to her repertoire. “It’s funny because when I met her [at Groovin’ The Moo last year] I said, ‘Did you hear the song I wrote for you?’ and she was like, ‘Nope’. I said, ‘yeah well, it’s mine now’,” the singer recounts. “AUSTRALIA, since you’re awake like me – what do you think about July?” – Dallas Green

The Hurry And The Harm also features a host of esteemed musicians, such as Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather), Bo Koster (My Morning Jacket), and drummer Matt Chamberlin (Pearl Jam, Fiona Apple), to name but a few.

The whole evolution of the sound; I think that’s just a total reaction to where I’m at creatively,” Green told Tone Deaf in a recent interview. “This group of songs just happened. The more I played them and the more I worked on them, the more I heard drums and bass and keyboards and strings and harmonies and things like that.”

Speaking about album track ‘Commenters’, Green said the album highlight was influenced by his critics and the influence of Internet keyboard warriors that are readily bring others down.

“It’s a two-part song,” begins Green. “Part of it is that it’s sort of a reaction to lazy uniformed journalism which is running abundant in this day and age that we live in, because everyone has a blog, everyone thinks they’re a writer, everyone has an opinion that they think is the right opinion.”

Green recounts a quote that was made by John Legend about Kanye West to convey the song’s sentiment: “He said ‘Kanye’s always felt that there is something he needed to share with the world’, and it’s like, jeez, would you just get over yourself for two seconds.”

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