St. Paul & The Broken Bones, who NPR Music has hailed as “one of the nation’s best live bands,” release their 6th studio album, the self-titled St. Paul & The Broken Bones via their own label, Oasis Pizza Records, distributed by Thirty Tigers. The album, from the ever-evolving Southern-soul giants, signifies both a reinvention and a reunion, stretching out with the confident experimental spirit of The Alien Coast and (2022) and Angels in Science Fiction (2023), but with a warmer, accessible, and fun sound that recalls the exuberance and buoyancy of their breakout debut, Half the City (2014). St. Paul & The Broken Bones is available on all formats here.
The band also announced their 28-date North American headlining tour, which will kick off in March 2026 and find the band performing in Cincinnati at Taft Theatre on May 5, 2026 with support from Brother Wallace.
With the new LP, co-written and produced with the decorated Eg White (Adele, Florence + The Machine, Sam Smith) and tracked with the band – consisting of Janeway, Phillips, guitarist Browan Lollar, drummer Kevin Leon, keyboardist Al Gamble, trumpeter Allen Branstetter, saxophonist Amari Ansari, and trombonist Chad Fisher— at the renowned FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, the band decided to stop pushing so hard and simply focus on classic "song craft." For Janeway, these 10 thrilling tunes feel like "comfort food," like hanging out at a "great barbecue joint."
The album follows 2023’s Angels In Science Fiction, and with that vibrant era in the rearview, there was an opportunity to regroup, which resulted in a return to their roots, if through a circuitous path. Janeway started collaborating with a series of co-writers and featured artists, eventually finding the perfect partner in White: a prolific, London-based pop-rock veteran who’s co-written and produced hits with stars like Adele ("Chasing Pavements") and Celine Dion ("Water and a Flame"). Aided by that expert ear, Janeway finished a batch of new music he was proud of—but he pivoted back to full-band mode in January ’24, regrouping with his old friends at FAME Studios, where they’d mixed their debut, Half the City, over a decade earlier.
It had been several years since they'd written together in this format, and during the session Phillips asked an intriguing question: 'Hey, man, can I hear some of the stuff you wrote with Eg White?" Janeway was initially reluctant to bring this music "into the band sphere," but his co-founder convinced him otherwise. They dusted off some of those tracks, melding them with the new group-written material. "Basically, our philosophy for the record was 'best song wins,'" the frontman says.
The resulting songs felt like a comforting hug, lived in, confident, and fun. "Fall Moon," includes a rippling Hammond organ and nostalgic brass; the bluesy "I saw the light" with a chorus of the swaggering "Ooo-Wee"; the stabbing electric keys and signature falsetto sweetness on "I Think You Should Know"; the deep-pocket bass and growling hooks on "Nothing More Lonely"; the breezy slice-of-life that is "Seagulls," St. Paul still branches out in subtle ways stretching out the experimental muscles the band has developed over the years.
With St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Janeway felt like they’d taken their sonic searching as far it could go—or at least "without doing some kind of death-metal album." But it raised a lot of important questions: "'What are we doing? What is the band now?’ You go through that kind of identity-crisis stuff. What is the band, and is this still creatively satisfying?" The answer is a resounding yes. "Making this record was a long journey, but I think it’s one of those rare times where it felt really worth it," Janeway says. "It feels very much like a renewed energy. And who knows? We might make our death metal record next."
