JARED ACT TO FOLLOW
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In association with
PEGGY GOU – I HEAR YOU
PEGGY Gou’s studio debut album opens with Your Art, a futuristic, synthesised track accompanied by speaking, rather than singing. It’s electronic and edgy, a sound that continues across the record.
Back To One uses drum and bass sounds and lively keyboard to create a light, cosmic mix.
Lenny Kravitz features on I Believe In Love Again, the album’s third track, with a funky, upbeat summer song.
All That is a standout song on the album – edgy and darker than the dreamy sound the rest of the tracks adopt.
Villano Antillano’s Spanish lyricism livens up the light-hearted, airy track.
(It Goes Like) Nanana is the stand out summer track. A strong finish, and a strong album. If you’re a fan, you’ll like this new release – just enough change to be new and exciting, without straying too far from what makes Gou’s music great. 8/10
JARED Leto is not one to do things by half measures. From his dramatic on-screen transformations to his extravagant red-carpet looks, the Hollywood star tends to go all in, especially when it comes to his art.
So when it came to creating new material for his band Thirty Seconds To Mars, it should not have been a surprise that he and his brother Shannon created 200 songs during lockdown.
The collection went on to become their sixth album, It’s The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day, beckoning a new era for the band, which they formed in LA in 1998.
“It was like a forced mini-retirement for him and I too, because we hadn’t stopped in so long,” frontman and lead singer Leto (52) tells me during a video call as he reflects on the songwriting process.
“It was actually really good for both of us in hindsight. It was a tough time for so many people around the world, but it gave us a moment to breathe. We started working on this music and we wanted to do something different, and not just make something that was expected. And we did that.”
The 11-track record delves into the darker side of the human experience and the world, while still holding on to hope.
This appears to be Leto’s attitude to many obstacles that come his way, and the latest gargantuan challenge facing the entertainment world – artificial intelligence (AI) – has already landed on his plate.
“I’ve had people already send me images, audio of me, that sound exactly like me, look exactly like me,” he says.
“I had someone send a fake song that sounded exactly like me and I was impressed with the technology, and also really concerned at the same time. I think that’s probably a natural reaction that one would have. But it’s exciting and also, it’s a wild time.”
The Oscar-winner was among the hundreds of thousands who supported the strike by the US actors union Sag-Aftra last year which brought Hollywood to a standstill over a series of issues, including the unregulated use of AI.
“I have a lot of thoughts on it,” Leto says, on the future of AI. “But I think ultimately it’s an inevitability, period. It’s a tool at best and at worst, it’s disruptive. To what degree? No one knows yet. I think on the one hand, it’ll help people unlock really creative dreams where they might have not had the ability to do that.
“So you’ll see people making incredible things with the help of AI that they wouldn’t have been able to before.
“But on the other end, it’s important to protect people, to protect creative people,
■ OUT OF THIS WORLD: Jared Leto; (inset) with bandmates Tomo Milicevic and his brother Shannon to protect artists.” While this technology continues to seep into more aspects of our lives, it has not yet replaced the exhilarating thrill of watching an artist perform live.
And with more than 20 years of experience on the road, Thirty Seconds To Mars are confident in their ability to put on a show.
They kicked off their Seasons world tour in support of their latest album in March.
Fans in Latin America, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand got lucky but Ireland was sadly not one of the destinations, even though they are playing the UK this week.
And after taking a five-year break from touring, the band are more fired up than ever, with Leto hailing them as the “best shows of our lives”. “It is an amazing thing. We’re so f ***** g grateful. It’s been incredible,” he tells me while pacing around his hotel room, still on a high from their show the night before.
“And to stand on stage and play two hours’ worth of music and to have people respond to songs from different parts of your life and their life is just a beautiful thing.”
Why does he feel their fans still gravitate towards their music? “Probably, for a lot of people, there’s either an aspirational or an emotional element that they connect to,” Leto says. “I suppose I’ve poured a lot of my hopes and dreams and fears and failures into the songs over the years.
“You hope that you connect to people in the way that I connected to other artists, and sometimes songs can change us, they can impact us, they can save us And you hope to make that connection with other people.”
■ Thirty Seconds To Mars’ album It’s The End Of The World But It’s a Beautiful Day is out now.