Shed Seven: new albums and tours at the double. Picture: Tom Oxley
YORK’S most successful band, Shed Seven, are to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their Britpop zenith, A Maximum High, on the road this autumn and next February.
October’s six-date tour comes in the wake of the Sheds’ sold-out open-air show at The Piece Hall, Halifax, on June 6, marking three decades since the April 1 1996 release of their second album, the one featuring five Top 40 hits: Where Have You Been Tonight?, Getting Better, Going For Gold, Bully Boy and On Standby.
Unlike this summer, no Yorkshire date will feature among the itinerary of intimate venues, some having played host to the Sheds during the album’s original promotion, some marking their return for the first time in more than a decade.
Frontman Rick Witter says: “After the incredible response to our A Maximum High 30th Anniversary show in Halifax, and after hearing that so many of you missed out, we’re thrilled to announce a special run of A Maximum High shows this October and in February 2027.
“This time we’ll be taking things back to where it all began: smaller, more intimate venues, just like the ones we were playing back in 1996. We’ll be performing A Maximum High in full, followed by a second set of Shed classics, along with a few tracks from our forthcoming self-titled album, Shed Seven.”
Tickets are still available for Birmingham O2 Institute on October 15, but shows at Kingston-upon-Thames (October 16), London Scala (October 17), Northampton Roadmender (October 29), Manchester Academy 2 (October 30) and Glasgow Barrowland (October 31) have sold out, as have the Sheds’ Irish shows in Belfast on October 23 and Dublin the following night.
Shed Seven at the finale to June 6’s A Maximum High 30th Anniversary gig at The Piece Hall, Halifax. Picture: Ianthe Photo
Tickets for the 8pm Birmingham gig, promoted by Jacaranda Records, are on sale at https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Birmingham/02-Institute-Birmingham/Shed-Seven-Album-Launch-Show/42608885/. The February 2027 tour schedule is yet to be announced.
In conjunction with the 30th anniversary gigs, a new album variant, Shed Seven – A Maximum Lo-Fi, will be created exclusively for these shows as a special edition of the upcoming self-titled Shed Seven album.
Alongside the new album, it includes exclusive bonus tracks featuring re-imagined versions of some of the deeper cuts and B-sides from the A Maximum High era. Think stripped-back performances, acoustic guitars, lo-fi textures and a completely different take on songs such as Magic Streets, Where Have You Been Tonight?, Lies, Out By My Side , Killing Time and more besides.
Looking to notch a hat-trick of chart toppers after A Matter Of Time and Liquid Gold in 2024, Shed Seven’s seventh studio album – hence the title to honour that landmark – will be released on Cooking Vinyl on January 8 2027, preceded by its lead single, Stand Together.
Rick enthuses: “We have taken great care in making this album what we believe to be our best yet, and we hope these songs are taken to people’s hearts. The comeback single Stand Together shows a statement of intent. It’s a call to arms and a rallying cry for some kind of unity in the world we live in today.”
The cover artwork for Shed Seven’s seventh studio album, aptly named Shed Seven, set for release next January
The Shed Seven diary for 2026 will conclude with the tenth edition of Shedcember, Shedcember X, their biggest winter tour yet, climaxing with two nights at Leeds O2 Academy. December 12 has sold out but tickets are still available for December 13 via ticketmaster.co.uk.
If A Maximum High was the maximum high of Shed Seven 1.0, Rick reckons Shed Seven 2.0 is “our second peak”. “What we’ve realised, in our early to mid-50s, is that not many get a second chance, but after dipping our toes in again in 2017 with Instant Pleasures, we knew we could still do it and we could enjoy it,” he says.
A Matter Of Time’s chart entry at number one in January 2024 and the brace of 30th anniversary concerts that followed at Futuresound’s Live At York Museum Gardens that summer gave impetus for Liquid Gold’s re-imagination of iconic Shed Seven tracks with orchestral arrangements, complemented by new recordings of Waiting For The Catch (featuring Issy Ferris) and All Roads Lead To You.
“We got to decide everything for that record, there was no pressure, and that comes through on the new record too,” says Rick. “We’ve recorded at it VADA Recording Studios, near Coventry, where we made Liquid Gold, working with Michael Rendall again, who’d engineered Instant Pleasures and moved up to producer for Liquid Gold.
“We recorded a song a day for A Matter Of Time, and this time me and Paul [guitarist Paul Banks] wrote the album over seven or eight months at Paul’s studio. Michael came in to whip the songs into shape, discussing how we could do something different out of the essence of what we’d come up with.
“We finished recording at the end of June for the first song, Stand Together, to come out in July, making the video on a boiling hot day in Wakefield, with Mr Paul Banks directing.”