Iowa native Max Jury has announced his return with a trio of London shows, plus news of a brand new record later in the year.

'Avenues', his third LP, was created in North Carolina during the pandemic and received input from Dan Rothman (London Grammar), Jimmy Hogarth (Amy Winehouse, Paolo Nutini) and Delilah Montagu.

We caught up with Max to discuss the creation process of 'Avenues', what to expect from the shows and more.

How is 2023 looking so far in the world of Max Jury?

It's picking up again thankfully. There's a few things in the pipeline, which is always nice, but generally I think February will come like a hurricane. With the pandemic, I haven't played a show in four or five years so it has been great to be reunited with the old band and get to play music again.

You’re playing a few shows at The Slaughtered Lamb in London – does a residency of sorts ease the pressure because you’re used to its surroundings?

I guess we'll see how the first show goes and take it from there. I’ll try to switch the setlist up so if people come to more than one show it won’t be a repeat. It is a cool and intimate space, so I think it will be a good vibe – we’re playing stripped back as well, so it should work nicely.

After the shows your new album, ‘Avenues’, is released. Is this an opportunity to road test material?

Definitely! I’ll be mostly trying out new material, but of course I’m going to play some of the more popular ones. Mostly these shows are an opportunity to get my feet back onto a stage and flesh out some new tracks ahead of the coming year.

You’ve worked with Dan from London Grammar and Delilah Montagu on the new record – what was it like to get their input?

We started working on the album during the pandemic, so it has taken a few years to get to the ten songs that eventually made it. In North Carolina I have a sort of in-between home studio that is also an actual studio, not just in my bedroom, so we were lucky to be able to record what we thought was going to be the record. Then Dan reached out to me at the last minute and we very quickly re-recorded half of the record with some great musicians in London. I was introduced to Delilah through a mutual producer and we had an instant admiration for each other’s craft. We’ve worked on quite a lot of material together and she’s a great creative partner.

Is your creative process quite tedious, in the sense that everything has to be fully polished and perfected, or do you prefer to leave some rawness in the final version?

I think a bit of both because when you work on something for so long you can get lost in your own headspace, start overthinking and go back and re-record parts. Saying that, there are songs that we’ve written and recorded in a few days that have the right feel straight away so we just leave them so they don’t sound over-cooked.

Aside from the London shows and ‘Avenues’, what else can we expect from Max Jury across 2023?

It is a blank canvas for the most part. There’s the new record like you say and we’ll hopefully create some videos for that, then hopefully more touring to promote it.