New Wax Wednesday

“Breaking the mold is hard to do.” It’s a key line from a brand-new song by Peter Frampton that succinctly describes just how hard it’s been for the man to dissent from following the herd (pun very much intended, for those in the know) and elude being restrained by any guardrails all throughout his career. It’s also a clarion call for Carry the Light, Frampton’s 19th studio album and his first collection of all-new rock material in 16 years. (His last record of all-new material was April 2010’s Thank You Mr. Churchill 2LP set on New Door/A&M/UMe.) Carry the Light will be released by UMe in various formats on May 15, 2026 — but of most import to we analog planeteers, it will be appearing on 180g yellow vinyl.

Comprised of ten songs co-produced by Peter, his son Julian Frampton, and Chuck Ainlay, Carry the Light is the most nakedly honest record Frampton has released to date, imo. That’s due in no small part to the intrinsic connection between father and son — something the 76-year-old guitarist/vocalist doesn’t take, well, lightly. “Carry the Light wouldn’t have been this good if it hadn’t been for the two of us working together — no way,” Peter told me quite emphatically via a recent Zoom interview. “I get deep, personal gratification from knowing that.”

Agreed Julian, who was also on the same Zoom call, “It’s been such a beautiful process to be a part of. I’m so proud of how much of a fighter my dad is, and how well we’ve been able to work on this album together. He’s been so cool with trying out all my ideas.” (Incidentally, one of Peter and Julian’s earliest collaborations actually appears on the aforementioned Churchill set: “Road to the Sun” [LP1, Side 1, Track 3], which was performed by Julian’s then band, Smoking Gun.)

When I spoke with Ainlay (Mark Knopfler, Miranda Lambert) over on our sister site Stereophile for the first installment of my three-part Studio Confidential Interview Series here, back on February 24, 2026, I also asked him to tell me straight-up what he felt about Carry the Light. “It may be the best album Peter’s ever made,” Ainlay, who’s worked with Frampton in the studio on and off for almost a quarter-century, replied. “I think part of it has to do with all that he’s been dealing with at this point in his life. The songs are just so poignant, and his voice has matured in a way that really delivers what he’s trying to get across. Yeah, it’s just incredible. It’s a really great album.”

I also asked Ainlay if he had any notes on the test pressing. “There was one little click I noticed,” he pointed out. “At the end of the first song on the second side, I was like, ‘Man, that one click is kind of annoying. Is there anything we can do about it?’ And they said, ‘Well, let us see if we can go in and clean up the mother.’ They were able to go in and actually get rid that one little spot in the mother — and then they repressed it.” How did it sound to you after that? “It is absolutely, stunningly quiet.”

Some key stats now. With lacquers cut by Jeff Powell, the Carry the Light 180g 1LP sports an SRP of $32.99, and it can be preordered from Music Direct here, and/or via the MD link graphic below, just ahead of the tracklisting section. A special limited-edition version of the LP, which features a premium cover treatment that will also be numbered and signed by Peter, is available exclusively via Frampton’s official site store here for $49.99, while the unsigned numbered edition is at uDiscover Music and Sound of Vinyl for $32.99. As best I can tell as of this posting, the Light LP is only being made available on yellow vinyl.

Frampton is surrounded on Carry The Light by an all-star supporting cast. For example, Sheryl Crow is Peter’s vocal foil on the earlier alluded to “Breaking the Mold” (Side 1, Track 4), Graham Nash adds his own vocal flourishes to the deeply touching “I’m Sorry Elle” (Side 1, Track 3), Bill Evans adds saxophone to both “Can You Take Me There” (Side 2, Track 3) and “Tinderbox” (Side 2, Track 4), and H.E.R. trades guitar lines on the instrumental “Islamorada” (Side 2, Track 2), among others.

More on two of those “other” key collaborators in a bit — but as an early taste of what’s to come, check out “Buried Treasure” (Side 1, Track 2), one of my favorite tracks from Light, via its official YouTube clip below.

If you instantly caught all of the Tom Petty-related references in “Buried Treasure,” you’re spot-on. It’s an unabashed homage to not only the late, great artist himself, but it also honors the SiriusXM radio show of the same name that Petty curated and hosted for 15 years, with its lyrics crafted entirely from Petty’s song titles. Frampton personally sought out Benmont Tench, Petty’s longtime righthand keyboard man, to add his signature style to the song. (Tench also played Hammond organ on the title track of the above-noted Churchill 2LP set.)

During the aforementioned Zoom interview I conduced with both Peter and Julian back on February 27, 2026, I asked them about the origins of “Buried Treasure” — and here’s what they told me, word for word. (I also requested they both identify their favorite Tom Petty songs.)

Julian Frampton: My dad discovered “Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure” radio show was airing on SiriusXM. It’s a deep dive into tracks you’ve heard that you don’t know where they come from — but Tom did. It’s rock history. It’s blues history. It’s jazz history. It’s just history. He was so incredible in the way he explained things, and played them from his own collection. He did that show on and off for something like 15 years. If you go to my dad’s house, “Buried Treasure” is just playing nonstop.

Peter Frampton: (laughs) It’s on in my house 24/7!

Julian: Yeah, it’s always playing. So it was on our minds and we realized, “Why don’t we write a tribute to Tom Petty?” We didn’t have any music yet, and we didn’t have any lyrics — but I had an idea. I downloaded every title of all of Tom Petty’s and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ songs. Basically, I took all those song titles and created a narrative using just the titles with no filler words, so everything you hear in the verses are Tom Petty songs.

Peter: And I asked one of the Heartbreakers, Benmont Tench, to play keyboards on it. I had first asked him to play on something years ago that I was producing for Davy Knowles. For me, the best keyboard players have always been Benmont, Ian McLagan of the Faces, and Nicky Hopkins. Ian McLagan and Benmont are like the UK/U.S. versions of each other.

Benmont is a lovely person to start with, so we really hit it off. I’m such a huge fan of his playing, because it’s so simplistic. The man can play much more than that, obviously, but he always comes up with the right thing. For example, in the first verse, there’s one organ note, and in the second verse, there’s an octave piano note. It’s just one note, you know? But it’s the right note.

Julian: What’s my favorite Tom Petty song? Oh, man — that’s hard. Well, as a kid, I loved “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” [the hit bonus track on November 1993’s Greatest Hits, on MCA]. That’s my favorite song. But then there’s the scene in [1996’s] Jerry Maguire with “Free Fallin’” [originally on April 1989’s Full Moon Fever, on MCA] — that’s so iconic!

Peter: It’s got to be “Refugee” for me. There are so many, but “Refugee” is the first one that hit me big time. I had the first two records, but when Damn the Torpedoes came out [in October 1979, on Backstreet/MCA] and I heard that song, that was it.

Another favorite Light track of mine is “Lions at the Gate” (Side 2, Track 1), which emerged from an idea Peter started working on about a half-decade ago but had never finished. After he brought it to Julian’s attention, “Lions” morphed into a no-holds-barred protest song that features one of the foremost auteurs of ballistic guitar explosiveness, Tom Morello. Check it out via the official YouTube clip below.

Naturally, I asked Peter and Julian to give me the 411 on how they got Morello involved on “Lions at the Gate.”

Peter: It wasn’t originally written for Tom to play on. It’s funny, because I’ve had that track about five or six years, back to when I was working in Nashville with my producer Chuck Ainlay and Dave Labruyere, who had played bass with me for a while. It started when I had been given a reproduction version of Buddy Holly’s acoustic guitar by his widow, Maria Elena. She asked me what my favorite Buddy Holly song was, and I said, “Peggy Sue.” Of all the guitars she made — about 40 of them — that one was called “Peggy Sue.” Paul McCartney wanted that one, but I got it. (laughs) That’s the guitar I was using here.

Julian: He had the music for “Lions at the Gate” for a while, and then we reworked the arrangement of it as we started to write lyrics. My dad brought along a collection of some stuff he had written down, and we were like, “Where can this fit? Does this make sense here?”

It really started to build into a protest song, very naturally. The song is angry. It’s an angry musical song, and it’s an angry lyrical song. As we were working on it and the more and more it became what it is, there was no doubt in my mind that, of all people, Tom Morello had to play guitar on the protest song. It had to happen. There are so many things interweaved into it, but this song is really about how we don’t treat our veterans well when they come home.

Peter: The idea that I had first of all was, “lions at the gate.” I’ve read various historical books on Hollywood, and I’ve also seen a lot about it on YouTube recently. It’s about the fact that Hollywood was built in the 1920s, and as soon as they made a lot of money, the artists, the business people, and Hollywood in general built these huge castle-looking things — and what was at the gate? Lions. It was mainly lions, but to me, it just signified power. I’m just anti-billionaire, basically. I had that line, “lions at the gate,” and then Julian came up with the first part: “Tear down the lions at the gate.”

Julian: “Tear down the lions at the gate,” yeah. That’s a strong message.

Finally, I asked Frampton père how he thinks the Light album will be received out in the world at large.

Peter: Do I think people will like Carry the Light? Well, let me share this story with you. I’ve known Elton John for years, and we had been catching up on each other’s health on email. I wrote, “I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I have a new album. If you would like to hear it, I’ll send it to you.” I didn’t put the album in the email, because I hate when people do that. I got an email back right after that where he said, “I would love to hear the album,” so I sent it to him.

Then, in the morning, I woke up, looked at my email, and there he is, going into raptures over the album. It was the best wake-up I’ve ever had! I sent him an email back: “You’ve made my year!” About 20 minutes later, the phone rings. He didn’t say who he was, but I knew it was him. He said, “ I just wanted you to know that I meant every word in that email.” That was extraordinary.

While I, of course, cannot yet provide a rating for the Sound of the LP until my signed preordered copy arrives, I can say the Music on Carry the Light rates a 9 right out of the box, as it is some of most affecting, and most personal music of Frampton’s I’ve heard to date. Besides all the tracks singled out above, the instrumental “At the End of the Day” (Side 2, Track 5), literally says it all without any words necessary. As Julian told me toward the end of our Zoom chat, “It’s the last track, and it tells you, ‘At the end of the day, everything is going to be okay’.”

It’s only befitting that Peter gets the last actual words here to bring Light full circle. “We knew we had the beginning and the end. We knew we had a starting point with ‘Carry the Light’ [Side 1, Track 1], and we knew we had the end with ‘At the End of the Day’,” he clarified, then added a final button about his creative process. “If I know what I’m doing on a track, the first take has got all the feel and all the emotion,” Peter continued. “I’ve always been more of a first-take guy, because you can’t think when you play. If you’re gonna work out the solo — which I hate doing — you gotta think about it, and then the feel disappears somehow. I prefer to just jump in and play off the moment.”

Light the way, my brother.

Want more Frampton? We got you covered!

Go here for Mark Smotroff and Mike Mettler’s combo review of the most excellent Vinylphyle series AAAA 180g 2LP reissue of Frampton’s January 1976 career-defining Frampton Comes Alive!. This story first posted on March 20, 2026.

Go here for Mike Mettler’s in-depth interview with Peter about Frampton@50: In The Studio 1972-1975 180g 3LP numbered, limited edition box set on Intervention. This story first posted on July 12, 2023.

Go here for Mike Mettler’s long-form review of the aforementioned Frampton@50 box set. This story first posted on July 26, 2023.

Go here over on our sister site Sound & Vision for Mike Mettler’s interview with Peter about the Peter Frampton Band’s instrumental April 2021 Frampton Forgets All the Words 180g 2LP set on UMe. This story first posted on May 7, 2021.

Go here over on our sister site Sound & Vision for Mike Mettler’s interview with Peter about the Peter Frampton Band’s August 2019 All Blues 180g 2LP set on UMe. This story first posted on August 29, 2019.

PETER FRAMPTON
CARRY THE LIGHT
180g 1LP (UMe)

Side 1
1. Carry The Light
2. Buried Treasure (Feat. Benmont Tench)
3. I’m Sorry Elle (Feat. Graham Nash)
4. Breaking The Mold (Feat. Sheryl Crow)
5. I Can’t Let It Be

Side 2
1. Lions At The Gate (Feat. Tom Morello)
2. Islamorada (Feat. H.E.R.)
3. Can You Take Me There (Feat. Bill Evans)
4. Tinderbox (Feat. Bill Evans)
5. At The End Of The Day