“I’d wake up, have no memory of it, then play it back – and funnily enough it worked”: The Pineapple Thief’s Bruce Soord drank to forget his new songs as he wrote them

Bruce Soord in 2026.

Bruce Soord’s fourth solo album Ghosts In The Park finds The Pineapple Thief bandleader in a sombre mood, reflecting on losing both his parents. The record explores themes of grief, memory and the places that shape us.

Soord wrote the music in hotel rooms over a two-year period on the road. The transient nature of touring life, he suggests, became inseparable from the emotional tone of the songs themselves.