Beautifully, brutally honest _{by Madelaine Empson}

Jon Toogood is bringing his first-ever solo album The Last Of The Lonely Gods to life across Aotearoa on a mammoth spring tour that reaches Wellington’s Meow on Saturday the 26^th of October. The Shihad frontman will offer fans an intimate, powerful experience of his latest work, born when he picked up a guitar as a form of mindfulness during an exceedingly tough time in his life.

“The music just started flowing out of me”, Toogood says of a period that encompassed loss and lockdowns, illness, and a severe case of tinnitus that turned up when he caught long COVID in 2021. “After what me and the whānau had been through over the previous couple of years, I needed to hear some music that was gentle, that said ‘there there – everything’s gonna be alright’, music that ‘held’ me and helped make sense of what had just happened. I couldn’t find that music so I created it.”

After writing Love Is Forever, a tune about the pain of losing his mum but at the same time, the bittersweet realisation that the cycle of life was continuing on in his six-year-old daughter, Toogood felt comforted. The songs poured out of him thick and fast from there.

Of all the albums he’s been involved in making, the hitmaker says The Last Of The Lonely Gods is one of his favourites.  

“It says exactly what I want it to say – it’s beautiful yet brutally honest and sounds better than I could’ve ever imagined. Now I get to share it live with people and live is where it all happens for me. That energy exchange, that ‘being in the moment’ that only performing live can give you. I can’t wait!”