TRAAMS Share Nine-Minute New Song “Breathe” (Feat. Softlizard)
personal best Due Out July 22 via FatCat
May 11, 2022 Photography by Steve Gullick
British post-rock band TRAAMS are releasing a new album, personal best, on July 22 via FatCat. Now they have shared its third single, the nine-minute-long “Breathe,” which features guest vocals from Softlizard (aka Liza Violet of Menace Beach). Listen below.
TRAAMS are Stu Hopkins (vocals, guitar), Leigh Padley (bass, vocals), and Adam Stock (drums, synths).
In a press release, Hopkins had this to say about the new single: “During one of 2020’s seemingly endless lockdowns once it was legal to do so, we began meeting up in Stu’s basement (due to our regular rehearsal space being shut). It was a strange time and we all felt palpably odd.
“We already had a couple of tracks from a previous session, but ‘Breathe’ felt new. It took us down a very different path, one that ultimately shaped the tone of the whole record—right down to the artwork.
“A soft, meandering lullaby, born out of a trip to the GP—waiting room imagery, mismatched furnishings, gaudy posters, and jarring slogans all coming together in a fleeting moment of calm, before expanding out into a celebration of life’s repetition.”
Personal best includes “Sleeper,” a new song TRAAMS shared in February that was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced the band shared its second single, “The Light at Night,” which features Joe Casey of Protomartyr and was shared via a video directed by Lee Kiernan of IDLES and Charlotte Gosch. “The Light at Night” was also one of our Songs of the Week.
Personal best is the band’s first full-length in seven years, since 2015’s Modern Dancing.
“I couldn’t really write, and I didn’t have the motivation to do anything musical. I’m pretty sure I didn’t pick up a guitar for two years,” Hopkins said in a previous press release of the long gap between albums. “I was waiting for that feeling to come back.”
In 2020, TRAAMS shared the songs “The Greyhound” (which was one of our Songs of the Week) and “Intercontinental Radio Waves” (also one of our Songs of the Week). Neither is featured on the new album and both were leftover TRAAMS songs Hopkins finished.
“They had been left as instrumental demos with no vocal takes, and to be honest they were beginning to drive me a little mad,” Hopkins explained. “I needed them finished and out of my head.”
At the end of 2019 the trio reconvened to begin work on new music and they began recording in 2020 when pandemic lockdown restrictions in the UK began to ease.
“I like the fact that it touches on old ideas and new ideas, created in this weird middle period of our lives when we were locked down and didn’t know when we’d get on stage again,” bassist Leigh Padley said. “We focused more on the writing than we had done before.”
Hopkins added: “Lockdown heightened how much we realized we needed to do this, after so many years inactive. We realized that TRAAMS was something we all really needed.”
TRAAMS 2022 UK Tour Dates:
JUL
10 - Bruges, BE, Cactus Fesitval
22 - Pie & Vinyl, Portsmouth
22 - Resident Records, Brighton
23 - Rough Trade East, London
OCT
12 - Brighton, Patterns*
13 - London, Moth Club*
14 - Bristol, Strange Brew*
15 - Birmingham, Future Days*
27 - Groningen, NL, Vera
28 - Deventer, NL, Burgerweeshuis
29 - Amsterdam, NL, London Calling
NOV
11 - Manchester, YES (Basement)*
12 - Leeds, Brudenell Social Club*
* support from Public Body
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