Stream the debut album from CYMBALS now via Pitchfork Advance

CYMBALS are now streaming their debut LP, The Age Of Fracture via Pitchfork Advance. The album will see official release on Feb. 4 via Tough Love Records. There is a literary inspiration running through the album, which was centered around an original poem from British poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine.

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The title itself, The Age Of Fracture, comes from a book by Princeton academic, Daniel T. Rodgers, which addresses the fragmentation of ideas towards the end of the last century and how collective meanings have become uncertain.  Singer and guitarist Jack Cleverly writes: “It hit me that I often feel paralysed by the feeling that everything is ‘too complicated’, and that many people I know feel that paralysis. I realized that this way of thinking can be traced through these songs.”

Produced by Dreamtrak (Swim Deep, Chad Valley, Hot Chip) in his Hackney studio and written collectively over the last 12-months, the group have taken their time to carefully piece the album together, song-by-song, in sequence. The album was completed following a final mix from Daniel Rejmer (Foals, Everything Everything) and the result is testament to the band’s attention to detail: a cleaner, brighter sound than their brattier early recordings, edging towards the European sophistication of the end-of-the-century French house Jack grew up around.

Through the writing of this album, CYMBALS have inevitably matured. “We’ve never been in it just for a laugh,” says Cleverly; “but things got confused when we said we wanted to keep it fun – we just didn’t want to end up bitter, having chased a hollow dream.  But this album is less about us; it’s more outward looking, more aware of the world at large.”

Despite the weighty literary influences, the band are keen to separate themselves from the over-earnestness that can sometimes accompany such associations.  “I hate the whole ‘serious earnest-singer-songwriter-thing,'” says Jack. “With this album I really wanted to get away from that and make music that makes people want to dance and feel joy. Neil’s kick drum is the most important thing we have to say as a band. Is this all “fun”?  Yes, of course, but at the same time, not just that.”

 

 

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