Births, Deaths & Marriages

For the registration of births, deaths and marriages, see Civil registry.
Births, Deaths & Marriages
Studio album by 26
Released 24 May 2008 (Australia)
Genre Indie rock, Alternative
Length 46:49
Label Floodboy Records
26 chronology

The Kings Must Die
(2005)
Births, Deaths & Marriages
(2008)
Sunshine Salvation
(2012)

Births, Deaths & Marriages is the second full-length studio album by Australian band 26, released in Australia on 24 May 2008 by Floodboy Records and MGM Distribution.

With 26’s growing popularity from the success of their first album, The King Must Die, the band toured Australia in 2006 for the release of their single "Friendly Fire", which went on to win the highly regarded 2006 Queensland Song Award for Best Rock Song, as well as being a finalist in The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Awards. The single also received airplay on national youth radio network Triple J and FBI Radio in Sydney. With the release of Births, Deaths & Marriages in 2008 came the track "Aloha", which was featured on the 3 mobile phone website. This led to "Aloha" debuting at #8 on the ARIA Digital Download Charts the following week. That same week, 26 was chosen as one of only forty acts to showcase at Queensland’s 2008 Big Sound Conference, one of the most respected and fastest-growing music business events in the Asia-Pacific region.

The album’s opening track, “A New Beginning”, featured in the season finale of NBC’s Rand Ravich-created police procedural drama series, Life,.[1] The episode aired in the US and Canada to more than 5,000,000 viewers on Wednesday, 8 April 2009, and aired in Australia on Network Ten on 29 April to over 776,000 viewers. The show also aired in an additional 22 countries. As a result, "A New Beginning", along with other selected tracks from 26’s catalogue, went on to receive airplay on numerous US college/alternative/AAA radio stations.

The title of Births, Deaths & Marriages stems from a series of life-changing events which impacted each individual band member in 2007 and shaped the writing of the album: frontman Nick O’Donnell’s second child was born, drummer Iain Wilson’s father died, the band lost a close friend to cancer, and bassist Ross Duckworth got married.[2]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by 26[3]. 

Births, Deaths & Marriages
No. Title Length
1. "A New Beginning"   4:23
2. "Aloha"   3:44
3. "The Optimist"   4:31
4. "Friendly Fire"   4:09
5. "You & the Song You Rode In On"   5:10
6. "Births, Deaths & Marriages"   6:45
7. "Storm"   1:15
8. "Boy Meets Girl. Girl Meets Boy."   3:51
9. "Bear With a Sore Head"   4:35
10. "Dear Mr Devil,"   3:35
11. "Take Me Home"   4:55

Personnel

External links

References

  1. "Life - Episode 221 Opening Track".
  2. MX (Brisbane), 23 May 2008, "Numerology the key to 26's continuing success"
  3. "APRA search engine". Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA). Retrieved 4 September 2009.