Harry and the Potters Conjure First Album in 13 Years ‘Lumos’
LP will explore political undertones of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter finale, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’
Brother's Joe and Paul DeGeorge of Harry And The Potters.
Wizard-rockers Harry and the Potters will release their first full-length album in 13 years, Lumos, June 21st before embarking on a nationwide library tour in support of the record.
Inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry and the Potters were at the forefront of the wizard rock movement which emerged in the early 2000s. Founded by brothers Joe and Paul DeGeorge, the band released their self-titled debut in 2003 then followed it up with Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock! in 2004 and Harry and the Potters and the Power of Love in 2006. After writing and recording Lumos last year, the band launched a Kickstarter where the record is available for purchase on CD and double-vinyl. Pledges over $35 will come with a bonus disc, Mostly Camping, which features 11 additional new songs.
Lumos is based on the seventh Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and pointedly spins the story’s political undertones into a commentary on contemporary American politics. Per a statement, “Using the magic of rock and roll, [Lumos] chronicles the events of the seventh and final Harry Potter book where J.K. Rowling’s teen wizard and his friends are on the run from a xenophobic, authoritarian regime and must work diligently to take down a dark wizard who capitalizes on fear and emboldens supremacist wizards.”
One song from Lumos, “The Sword, the Cup and the Dragon,” is available to stream exclusively on the Harry and the Potters website. The track chronicles the break in at Gringotts Bank, which Harry, Ron and Hermione carried out on May 1st, which is celebrated around the world as May Day and International Worker’s Day. Fittingly, the song will only be available to stream today, May 1st.
Harry and the Potters further teased Lumos with a video modeled after cheesy late-night infomercials, which features snippets of several new songs (it also opens with a screen grab of the band’s old MySpace page for anyone looking for a real nostalgia trip). The track list includes songs about the wizard surveillance state (“The Trace”), media literacy and propaganda (“On the Importance of Media Literacy Under Authoritarian Rule”) and cats (“What Happened to the Cat?”). There’s even a duet with the Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson, who gamely portrays Hermione on the “platonic friendship power ballad duet,” “Where’s Ron?”
Harry and the Potters will kick off their library tour June 21st at the Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The trek wraps August 24th at the Boston Public Library in Boston. Additional dates are expected to be announced soon and complete ticket information is available on the band’s website.
In an interview with Rolling Stone last year, Harry and the Potters spoke about the social justice themes in the Harry Potter books and how Rowling’s work has helped inspire a generation of young activists (the band also co-founded the activist organization, the Harry Potter Alliance).
“We started working together in 2005 to use these stories as a framework for introducing people to social justice work: to create a real-world Dumbledore’s Army,” said Paul DeGeorge. “I’ve seen a handful of think-pieces recently that are basically like ‘Harry Potter isn’t real and it should be a basis for any sort of activism,’ but I think those takes miss the point entirely. That’s fine if you came out of the womb super-woke, but people learn in different ways and follow different paths to activism. The Harry Potter Alliance has been particularly successful at creating thousands of first-time activists, many of whom have gone on to make this work an important part of their lives.”
Lumos Track List
1. “Lumos”
2. “You’re Not the Wizard”
3. “Good Riddance (Privet Drive)”
4. “The Trace”
5. “On the Importance of Media Literacy Under Authoritarian Rule”
6. “Hermione’s Army”
7. “What Happened to the Cat? “
8. “The Banality of Evil (Song for Albert Runcorn)”
9. “Gone Campin’”
10. “Where’s Ron?” (featuring Kimya Dawson as Hermione Granger)
11. “No Pureblood Supremacy”
12. “Voldemort in Your Head”
13. “The Sword, The Cup, and the Dragon”
14. “The Cloak”
15. “The Stone”
16. “The Wand”
