Communions share grunge-tinged new single ‘Cupid’

Communions have shared their grunge-tinged new single Cupid. The track is a euphoric anthem of liberation. You can listen to Cupid via YouTube below but it’s also available now across other streaming platforms here.

’Pure Fabrication’ album details

Copenhagen-based Communions recently announced their sophomore album ‘Pure Fabrication’. A reverse coming of age story of Odyssian size and scope, the collection tackles themes of change, instability, freedom, love and identity. ‘Pure Fabrication’ LP is due out April 23 via Tambourhinoceros – pre-order it here.
 
While Bird of Passage, the album’s opener introduced these themes, and Splendour showed us the band’s take on destructive love, Cupid, the album’s brand new third single, now shows us Communions’ vision of naive love and freedom from which the story begins. Cupid is a feel-good indie rock cut reminiscent of their early output which garnered high praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork and KEXP + more. Yet, as the narrative arc of Communions’ sophomore album begins to surface, it’s clear that this collection will be more nuanced, conceptual and revealing.
 
Lead singer and guitarist Martin Rehof elaborates: “The album’s preoccupation with change and instability, a red thread that’s established on Bird Of Passage, is mirrored in the progression of the songs themselves, as themes shapeshift and take on new points of departure from one story to the next. For instance, the romantic notion of love on Cupid morphs into a skewed, addictive and possessive kind of love on Splendour.”

A 15-track collection of Odyssian scope, Communions weave an intricate tapestry from “cultural debris”. ‘Pure Fabrication’ draws upon brothers Martin and Mads Rehof’s personal experience as much as it does from a collage of myths. The Danish brothers spent over a decade of their childhood and early teens in Seattle, only to move back to Copenhagen in the midst of their formative years. While ‘Pure Fabrication’ is partly a bid at finding their place and self-understanding through the lens of stories and myths—a keen listener can spot traces of Goethe’s Faust, Shakespear’s Lear, Homer’s Sirens, and the Norse fate-holding Norns—at its core, it is something more: a meta-narrative on the human condition. 
 
Following the arc of a reverse coming of age story through the journey of a fictional protagonist, ‘Pure Fabrication’ opens on the themes of liberation, independence, freedom, transformation—the ingredients of a coming of age story—and the character’s pursuit of them. Yet, “as the album progresses, strong ironic overtones in whatever praise of freedom was besung are slowly unveiled,” the band shares. “While the opening songs represent a character with an—perhaps naive—assertiveness and unwillingness to be restrained or suppressed by the ways of the world, by the end of the record, the protagonist questions the entire notion of desire and freedom.”
 
After six years, three EPs, one album, countless shows and festivals across the globe, Communions is now led by Rehof brothers: Martin (vocals and guitar) and Mads (Bass) with Splendour still featuring the contributions of ex-bandmates Jacob van Deurs Formann (guitar) and Frederik Lind Köppen (drums). Fate, freedom, culture, love and identity are on trial in ‘Pure Fabrication,’ as Communions question themselves and their world on this masterful sophomore album.

‘Pure Fabrication’ track list
 
1. Bird Of Passage
2. Humdrum
3. Cupid
4. My Little Planet
5. Learn To Pray
6. Signs Of Life
7. Splendour
8. History (The Siren Song)
9. Blunder In The Street
10. Is This How Love Should Feel?
11. Hymn 
12. Androgyny
13. Here And Now
14. Celebration
15. The Gift Of Music

What begins as naive and free on ‘Pure Fabrication’ will not end that way, promises the band’s reverse-coming-of-age album concept.