The Cribs have shared the video to I Don’t Know Who I Am, the latest track lifted from their forthcoming eighth album, ‘Night Network,’ which is set to be released via Sonic Blew/[PIAS] on Friday November 13th 2020.
The track sees the band reuniting with Lee Ranaldo (from Sonic Youth), who contributed spoken word verses on their much-loved 2007 track Be Safe. Here providing guitar, the track was recorded at Dave Grohl’s 606 Studios in Los Angeles during the album sessions, before Ranaldo layered sheets of white-noise guitar over the recording at Sonic Youth’s Hoboken studio, and a few backing vocals for good measure. Check out the I Don’t Know Who I Am video via YouTube below.
Talking about the track, the band said: “I Don’t Know Who I Am (although ultimately quite different) came together in much the same way as Be Safe did back in 2006 – we had a recording of a long, improvised noise-jam which we then tried to refine into a more cohesive song structure. Due to the similarities in the writing process, it made us think of Lee again…we had initially requested that he play noise guitar over the track, because we wanted to keep it somewhat abstract and create the impression of the melodies just kind of emerging out of the static…but he went beyond the call of duty and also added some beautiful vocal harmonies too, out at the Sonic Youth studio in New Jersey.
Working with Lee on Be Safe was without question one of the highlights of our career as a band, and we think that I Don’t Know Who I Am is a worthy follow up collaboration. We are very proud of how it turned out.Lyrically, the song addresses the disconnect that Ryan and myself have always had with our biological paternal lineage – and how that may have shaped our views on masculinity, gender roles, and the men we ultimately grew up to be.”
Additionally, the band have announced a short run of UK in-store shows, the full list is as follows:
11.12.2020 – Banquet Records – Kingston (full band set) TICKETS
11.14.2020 – Action Records (show at Blitz) – Preston (acoustic set)
11.15.2020 – Crash Records (show at the Brudenell) – Leeds (acoustic set) TICKETS
11.16.2020 – Bear Tree Records (show at the Foundry) – Sheffield (acoustic set) TICKETS
The band added about these in-stores:
“To celebrate the release of Night Network, we are excited to announce a run of intimate instore shows in support of independent record stores around the UK! Obviously, due to the ever-changing climate we are aware of the fact that these shows may not be able to happen during release week…but one way or another, we 100% guarantee (swear to God, brothers/sisters…) that we will make these shows happen at the earliest possible opportunity, and we will sing and dance and be happy together, whilst supporting our favourite record stores. You have our word”
Finally, the band recently shared details of a U.K. tour in June 2021. Including appearances at the Roundhouse in London and an outdoor show at Halifax’s historical Piece Hall, the full list of shows is as follows:
11.06.21 – The Roundhouse – London
14.06.21 – O2 Institute – Birmingham
15.06.21 – Boiler Shop – Newcastle
17.06.21 – SWG3 Galvanizers – Glasgow
18.06.21 – Academy – Manchester
20.06.21 – Piece Hall – Halifax
Tickets for the shows are on sale now and available via gigsandtours.com (London, Birmingham, Newcastle and Manchester) and seetickets.com (Glasgow and Halifax).
Having released their Steve Albini engineered album ‘24-7 Rock Star Shit,’ their fourth consecutive UK top 10 album, in August 2017 the multiple Q and NME Award winning band almost immediately parted company with their long time UK management and found themselves stuck in what Gary describes as a “legal morass”, unable to record or release new music, so touring wasn’t an option either. That meant 18 months of fallow – heartbreaking stuff for a band who’ve known nothing else in their adult lives. “At one point we were actually so disillusioned with what had happened, we didn’t even know if we wanted to get back into the band any more,” says Ryan.
Fast forward 3 years and ‘Night Network’ is as fresh, cathartic and vital as anything they’ve ever put out. There’s no weariness, no bitterness, just a clear desire to get back to doing what they do best, that unique blend of bittersweet melody, brutal lyrical honesty and riffs for days. The turning point came at the 11th hour, in the late summer of 2018. The Cribs had been invited to support Foo Fighters at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium, in what could very well have been the band’s last hurrah. Enter the brothers’ knight in shining armour, and childhood hero, Dave Grohl. Hanging out backstage, chatting over a few post-show drinks, The Cribs confided their recent struggles to their new friend. “Dave was just like, ‘Forget about all that business stuff, just come out to LA and make a record at our studio’ – Dave made that offer to us,” Ryan recalls.
The three brothers are now scattered over nearly 5,000 miles, with Gary in Portland, Oregon, Ryan in Queens, New York and Ross in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. When they gathered in the UK for a family Christmas in December 2018, they began working on songs in Ross’s garage, and found the creative juices flowing. The songs came together fast, and when they finally contacted the Foo Fighters and said they’d be keen to take them up on the offer, they were offered a window of studio time in April 2019 – a fixed date to work towards, and the impetus for a final push to sort out the miasma of business mess. Their new found autonomy extended to the recording process itself – this is the first album to be entirely self-produced by the band. Engineered by James Brown (Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys) and mixed by frequent Cribs collaborator John O’Mahony (who also worked on ‘Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever’ and ‘For All My Sisters’) the record took shape over two weeks in LA, plus an extra week of overdubs at Halfling Studios in Portland. Mercifully, it is not a poor-me album about the ills of the industry. No, they deal with that on the first track, a slice of surf-ready sunshine pop with gorgeous harmonies called Goodbye. “That was our way of saying ‘goodbye’ to that period of our lives. Let’s move on,” says Ross. After that, no indulgence is made to the band’s struggle. Instead, it’s wall-to-wall Cribs bangers, the fruit of that special, symbiotic relationship between the songwriting, singing brothers, drawing on the boiled-down influences they felt had always been there: The Motown stomp of Never Thought I’d Feel Again and Under The Bus Station Clock, red and blue album-era Beatles (Running Into You and In The Neon Night, respectively), melodic ’70s style pop on Deep Infatuation, and even early work by their own band.
In a typically downplayed way, the band have honed in on what’s so special about The Cribs: really bloody good songs. Fans might well think this is their best album in a decade. So, once again all is right in Cribs world – or as much as all is right in any world in 2020 at least. The Cribs are romantics and they’re realists, and the balance, for a hot minute, nearly tipped in the favour of the latter. But now they return empowered, beholden to no one, on the greatest form and still screaming in suburbia.
‘Night Network’ track listing
1. Goodbye
2. Running Into You
3. Screaming In Suburbia
4. Never Thought I’d Feel Again
5. Deep Infatuation
6. I Don’t Know Who I Am (feat. Lee Ranaldo)
7. She’s My Style
8. Under The Bus Station Clock
9. The Weather Speaks Your Name
10. Siren Sing-Along
11. Earl & Duke
12. In The Neon Night
Pre-order ‘Night Network’ here
For more information on The Cribs, visit thecribs.com.
