Mike Skinner Borrows Everything

After trying to walk from southern England to France and forgetting he had a gig in Austria at the same time, Mike Skinner is set to release a new Streets album called Everything Is Borrowed on Oct. 7 through Vice Records.

Skinner has described Everything Is Borrowed as his "peaceful coming to terms album," and says he'll follow it with a "dark Berlin-influenced electronic album" that will be the final Streets release. You can watch the video for "The Escapist," which Skinner filmed while walking to France, and get a free download of the track here. You can preview seven songs from Everything Is Borrowed on The Streets' MySpace page, while the album's four other tracks are being hosted by other people's MySpace pages, which Skinner challenges you to find.

Aside from buying a CD, you can also get the album on a USB key.

"It looks like a lighter, but it has the album on it and also gets you access to a special place online where we will post lots of interesting stuff," Skinner wrote in a MySpace blog entry. "I'm really excited about this cos it means we can put really lairy stuff up without getting in too much trouble."

Skinner recently hinted in another blog entry that he was considering an interesting promotional tactic for the October tour behind Everything Is Borrowed, which may include "borrowing" fans.

"Still not sure whether it will come off, but the idea is for people to bring items with them to 'borrow' to us (I'm aware of the error in this verb usage but my new album isn't called 'everything is lent')," he wrote.

"Our favourite items will be borrowed along with their owners and taken to the following show. So, if you lend us something in Stockholm we would bring you to Copenhagen."

Skinner has released three previous albums as The Streets, with the most recent being 2006's The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living. His Original Pirate Material debut was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

Here are the songs on Everything Is Borrowed:

"Everything Is Borrowed"
"Heaven For The Weather"
"I Love You More"
"The Way Of The Dodo"
"On The Flip Of A Coin"
"On The Edge Of A Cliff"
"Never Give In"
"The Sherry End"
"Alleged Legends"
"Strong Person"
"The Escapist"