Doctor Who Star Peter Capaldi to Release Solo Album

It looks like Peter Capaldi is pivoting from taking on Daleks and Cybermen to tackling the Billboard charts. Monks Road Records has announced that the star will be releasing a new album of original music this November, his first venture into the world of new music and an all-new kind of adventure for an actor known for traveling in time and mouthing off to fictional politicians.

Capaldi has maintained a musical presence throughout his career as an actor, not only bringing his musical prowess to his role as the Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who, sporting sunglasses and shredding on an electric guitar, but also appearing in the music video for “Someone You Loved,” the 2018 single by Lewis Capaldi, a distant cousin of his. But this is the first time since his art school punk days—during which his band The Dreamboys released one single before disbanding because “nobody was interested”—that he has tackled original compositions of his own.

doctor-who-peter-capaldi-exits — Image via BBC America

The new album, titled St. Christopher, came as a result of Capaldi’s work with The Blow Monkeys in 2019, when lead singer Dr. Robert invited the actor to play at a recording session for their album Humanism, and encouraged him to try writing his own music for the first time in nearly forty years:

“Watching the musicians work, something drove me to scribble out a song, just for the chance of having them play it, and when they did I knew immediately this was something I wanted to do again. So, I set about it. Robert patiently endured these efforts, encouraging some, letting others slip quietly away, until eventually we felt we had enough ideas to go into the studio… And then it was March 2020 and everything stopped. We had demos, computers, Robert’s address book, and a very clear diary so, through the magic of modern technology, we sent the tracks back and forth until finally, with the help of some brilliant musicians, we found ourselves with something that very much appeared to be an album.”

The album is led by a single of the same name, “St. Christopher,” named after a saint discarded by the Vatican in the 1960s, but who people never really forgot. Capaldi professed to the BBC’s Chris Hawkins that he doesn’t consider himself a musician, but rather that being onstage as an actor versus performing as a musician are two completely different experiences for him—rather than being “in service to the author’s voice” with a play or film, writing and performing music allows him to “generate [his] own kind of worldview” to share with audiences.

St. Christopher will be available to stream globally on November 19, and physical copies can be preordered via Monks Road Records’ website. Fans can listen to the single of the same name now wherever music is available.

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