{"id":33858,"date":"2020-04-03T12:15:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T16:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=33858"},"modified":"2020-03-25T21:18:34","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T01:18:34","slug":"young-knives-announce-new-album-barbarians-share-video-for-new-single-sheep-tick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=33858","title":{"rendered":"Young Knives announce new album \u2018Barbarians\u2019 + share video for new single \u2018Sheep Tick\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Young Knives (brothers Henry Dartnall and The House of Lords)\u00a0<\/em>have announced their fifth album,\u00a0\u2018Barbarians\u2019; their first\u00a0full-length in seven years, following 2013’s acclaimed\u00a0\u2018Sick Octave\u2019.\u00a0\u2018Barbarians\u2018\u00a0is a leap into both sonic and thematic experimentation by a band who love to confuse and entertain in equal measure.

Written, recorded and mixed by Young Knives in their studio near Oxford, Henry says about \u2018Barbarians\u2019, “We broke down all the barriers to creativity and made the most cathartic and noisy album of our career.\u201d<\/em>

It was as the brothers ventured into philosopher John Gray\u2019s 2002 book Straw Dogs that they were inspired to dial into the ultra-violent, brutal nature of human beings. Henry comments,\u00a0\u201cAs with every Young Knives album, me and House always need a good reason to make it. We often start with some high concept that we feel passionate about and use it like a framework to build lyrics and motifs around. As confirmed but self-aware nihilistic miserabilists we often have to dig our way out of a spiralling bleak world view that would make for a super depressing listen. This album is no different. But I think that\u2019s the point of the records we make: how can we turn the worse aspects of humanity into something really fucking entertaining? Obviously there was a lot going on around the world at the time we were writing the record, with the rise of the alt-right and politics designed to divide us. All this fed into a sense that humans are always going to have this battle between our collective existence and the existence of the individual, some days we give and some days we take.\u00a0<\/em>

I read Straw Dogs after having put it off for years because of the hype. It\u2019s something you can\u2019t un-read. Its key point is that no matter what scientific progress we have made, what advances we have made in our understanding of how the universe works, we have not become better humans, we are no less barbaric. I just thought that it was such an undeniable point; we are obsessed with self and social improvement, but we don\u2019t get any better as human beings. What if cruelty to others is just part of who we are? How do we live with that?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>

In lead single Sheep Tick<\/em>, these questions are confronted head-on. Henry’s first lyric,\u00a0“Cruelty, I let you back in \/ I’m wondering why”<\/em>\u00a0sets the tone for an unsettling listen, accompanied by a video that is\u00a0uncomfortable and unexpected.

Henry continues,\u00a0“Music videos are awful and we wanted to lean into that. The idea behind this one\u00a0was to make a video that you couldn\u2019t have pitched. We just started shooting without knowing what it was, our goal to make it as baffling and\u00a0entertaining as possible. Weirdly, the great thing is that some of the video\u00a0started to make sense with the song after we had finished it: House\u2019s goblin character is the voice inside that tells you how worthless you are, and you have to make peace with him. Most of it doesn\u2019t make any sense though.”<\/em>

Watch video for Sheep Tick<\/em> via YouTube below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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