“We needed to only hold it easy, silly”

Sunflower Bean have returned with new single ‘Shake’ – the title-track of an upcoming EP. Try the mud-covered video under now, alongside NME’s unique chat with the band.

The ‘Shake’ EP will likely be launched by way of Fortunate Quantity on September 27. Its 5 tracks will every be accompanied by a 14-minute performance-based video that sees every tune signify a pure component: earth, wind, water, fireplace and steel.

Every video was directed by rising Toronto director Isaac Roberts over the course of 1 weekend in upstate New York. The primary, for ‘Shake’, places the band in a darkish, dingy wooden, the place they carry out with their our bodies and their devices slathered in mud.

“After we advised lots of people, ‘That is what we wish to do – 5 movies in a single weekend and simply go fucking loopy’, lots of them had been scared,” singer and bassist Julia Cumming advised NME. “You want somebody with DIY ethos who is able to do what it takes to get the shot and generally meaning constructing a mud pit within the forest and spraying your self with a hose time and again.”

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMydWrI-uWM[/embed]

“While you make an EP and it’s impressed by uncooked components, you’re gonna get uncovered to the weather,” guitarist Nick Kivlen famous.

“The entire movies are very performance-based and live-based, which we thought would communicate to the music greatest,” Cumming continued. “Getting again into that reside spirit after feeling like a writing band and a studio band prior to now few years was actually cool. It feels good to place your physique on the road – not that it was on the road, however our efficiency in that video and all of the movies exhibits what issues to us, which is simply giving ourselves to the tune.”

“There are just a few extra movies which have loopy setups, like lots of Julia singing underwater,” Kivlen added.

The “elemental factor”, because the band prefer to consult with it, sprung from “somewhat little bit of wordplay”, Cumming mentioned. “A variety of the songs had been written in drop C, which is what [Black Sabbath guitarist] Tony Iommi popularised when he misplaced his fingertips in a sheet steel manufacturing facility, so there’s this industrial spirit that's embedded into how the songs had been made. Even the phrase ‘shake’ could be very tangible…”

“And like uncooked materials,” Kivlen chimed in. “It felt very stone, slab… like a construction that’s unrefined.”

“With it being elemental, we needed to consider how they work collectively,” Cumming continued. “Quite than it being fireplace, we had been serious about magma and that being the visible through-line of a fiery tune like ‘Educate Me To Be Unhealthy’. The mud in our video is mud, but it surely’s additionally granite-coloured – it’s not concrete, but it surely’s like if mud was concrete.

“We’re taking part in with how impressed we will be by the rawness of nature with the truth that we’re metropolis individuals and a New York Metropolis band, and the way we will interpret that into and respect the industrial-ness of the extra steel or rock concepts. You begin taking part in with the silliness of the phrase ‘rock’ and the way far you'll be able to take that and what it means to you.”

The tune ‘Shake’ was impressed by drummer Olive Faber and the band’s supervisor watching the 1997 horror film I Know What You Did Final Summer season and, specifically, the duvet of Seals & Crofts’ ‘Summer season Breeze’ that Kind O Damaging contributed to the soundtrack. “It was the autumn and each fall I get into heavy music once more,” Faber defined. “I confirmed it to Nick, and he sat down on the bottom [in the studio], and he simply performed the ‘Shake’ riff.”

“The perfect a part of the Kind O Damaging tune is when the riff’s taking part in and there’s this breath sound,” Kivlen mentioned. “We had been like, ‘What if your entire tune simply had that vitality and by no means grew to become extra of a ballad?’”

“‘Shake’ is as a lot about dedication to a riff as it's about what it says, and it was step one in defining us eager to make one thing extra experimental,” Cumming added. “The whispery ‘shake’ on the tune grew to become nearly like our pseudo DJ tag for the entire EP as a result of it’s on each single tune.”

The EP’s title observe opens with that tag whispered via the crunching, uncompromising riff earlier than Kivlen and Cumming take the reins vocally. “Glad {couples} make me sick,” they sneer in unison on the refrain, “I’m simply shaking for the hell of it.”

“It’s a tune that’s towards conference, whether or not that’s monogamy or inflexible social constructions,” Kivlen mentioned. “It talks about who you're when the world can’t see you and simply having enjoyable. The ‘Glad {couples} make me sick’ line is simply humorous to me as a result of there’s so many songs about being in love.

“I believe the tune is form of attractive in a scary method, like the way in which bands within the ‘90s had been – Billy Corgan was scorching, however he additionally regarded like a vampire. Alice In Chains had been attractive, however they had been actually soiled and all their album covers regarded like mud. Kurt [Cobain], clearly, was actually scorching, however not conventionally. So, I believe it’s an attractive, ugly tune.”

The ‘Shake’ EP marks the New York trio’s first new materials because the launch of their 2022 album ‘Headful Of Sugar’ and likewise types the band’s first totally self-produced file.

“On ‘Headful…’, we did a bunch of that, but it surely was despatched backwards and forwards between us and [producer] Jacob Portrait,” Cumming defined. “However that is our first self-recorded, self-produced piece of labor fully, in order that’s very particular for us.

“We’ve all spent lots of time serious about manufacturing and dealing in that space, particularly Olive – she was the one who, within the pandemic, taught herself essentially the most and has now been engineering and producing so many classes for different artists, too.”

Cumming continued to explain taking cost of the technical course of behind the file as “thrilling and weak another way”. Kivlen added: “It was good to really feel assured to know what you wish to do and never have anybody telling you what to do, or anybody serving to you do it both. It was very matter-of-fact, it was very pure and it simply made sense.”

The ‘Shake’ EP was impressed by the band’s early years within the DIY scene. It additionally captures the heavier facet of the trio that has all the time existed inside their DNA, however has not all the time been on the forefront of their sound as they’ve explored new methods of expressing themselves. “While you’re within the arts, you’re continuously reflecting on, ‘What do I've to supply? Why am I right here?’” Cumming mentioned.

“There have been heavier components of ‘Headful…’, however we might all the time discover once we performed these songs reside that was the place the three of us felt at house and it felt like we hadn’t made a bit of labor that mirrored that since possibly [2015 EP] ‘Present Me Your Seven Secrets and techniques’.

“Even in [2016 debut album] ‘Human Ceremony’, there’s strings and all this totally different stuff. So it was a little bit of soul-searching and there’s rather a lot inside the EP that's concerning the love of being a rock journey and letting that stand as it's.”

“While you’re an artist, after you do one factor, it’s good to do the opposite factor,” Faber mentioned. “‘Headful…’ and even [2018 second album] ‘Twentytwo [In Blue]’ took form over the course of a few years and, with every of them, we had been actually into stepping into the studio and making an attempt every thing and, with ‘Shake’, it simply felt just like the pure development to maneuver ahead and do it [in a way] that’s not piecemeal manufacturing, however simply reside takes of us taking part in the songs. We made a few albums that had been produced to the nines and, on this one, we needed to only hold it easy, silly.”

The ‘Shake’ EP is out September 27 by way of Fortunate Quantity. Try the complete tracklist under.

1. ‘Shake’
2. ‘Fortunate Quantity’
3. ‘Educate Me To Be Unhealthy’
4. ‘Serial Killer’
5. ‘Angelica’

Sunflower Bean may even mark its launch with a sequence of membership exhibits throughout the US – see the complete dates under and buy tickets here.

October 2024

2 – Brooklyn, NY – Child’s All Proper
9 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
12 – Chicago, IL – The Empty Bottle

November 2024

16 – Austin, TX – Empire Management Room