PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, Dead Can Dance, Black Sabbath, Birthday Party.

In Blood is the group’s 14th album and the follow-up to 2020’s critically acclaimed Dances/Curses.

It was typical of a band so well-known for stellar live performances to release their most successful album at a time when they were unable to back it up on the road. As was the case for many, lockdown changed the band’s lives in unexpected ways. Some felt a form of cabin fever at not being able to continue to make music (diverting their energies elsewhere - founding Wrong Speed Records for starters) whereas others relished the peace and quiet, perhaps questioning whether they wanted to return to the life they had before. Gigs (so long the lifeblood of the band) were booked, postponed, and cancelled. Things began to unravel and perhaps for the first time since the band formed in 2003 it was hard to see how it could continue.

A plan was hatched to attempt to re-energise and reassemble the band: they would begin work on a new album. They would approach this as though a Somerset version of The Desert Sessions – members old and new and guests would contribute as and when time and restrictions allowed.

Lyrically, British folk and ghost mythology provided the starting position for the song themes ranging from mutated stories of grief and loss written in the 14th Century (Perle), spiritual reawakening by ancient apparitions (Avalon) to the growth of nature after devastation (Can’t Feel Around Us, Over Cedar Limb), a metaphor also for spirit and body renewal and rebirth after trauma.

The results sound free of any genre shackles and it suits Hey Colossus. They have taken the expansive anything-goes approach that made Dances/Curses so successful and fine-tuned and shaped it into an 8-song single album that never treads water or fills time. The prominent vocals steer the listener through the music, defining it as opposed to punctuating it (or being buried by it).

The album is a calling card for the band in their 20th anniversary year. As odd and challenging as long-term fans would expect or hope for, but somehow more accessible and to the point than ever before. It is the closest the group have ever come to a pop record, radiating positivity through the murk like a small ray of light in some very dark and very weird times. Music can never entirely negate these feelings but, like the natural world referenced in the lyrics and sleeve, it invisibly bonds people together, lifting us up if we choose to let it.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Name In Blood
2. I Could Almost Care
3. Perle
4. Can’t Feel Around Us
5. Curved In The Air
6. Avalon
7. TV Alone
8. Over Cedar Limb

Amplification moves air and gestures to the celestial. A splitter van parks in a service station. The afterglow of the stage. The weight of a bass cab up a steep flight of metal stairs. Hey Colossus are no strangers to the dualities of life as a loud rock band. But more importantly, they know how to channel both facets into records that transcend all limitations in a blinding volley of incandescence.

'Dances / Curses' - their lucky thirteenth record - is the work of six musicians at the peak of their considerable powers of intuition and inspiration.Constant motion is also something Hey Colossus know a little about, now into their eighteenth year as a band in a never-ending search for new trouble and new epiphanies. When this iteration of the band - which came together around the making of their last release, 2019’s ‘Four Bibles’, geographically spread between Somerset, Watford, London, Nottingham and Sheffield - first began work the chemistry apparently took care of itself, with their meetings at weekend rehearsals seeing them undergo a process less like jamming and more like a particularly intensive form of instant composition. Whatever sparks were spontaneously flying in these initial sessions, they gave rise to enough material to make 'Dances / Curses' a double record, running the gamut from the rhythmically-driven, infectiously melodic songcraft of ‘Donkey Jaw’ and ‘Medal’ via the slow-burning atmospherics of ‘U Cowboy’ to the mightily motorik-driven 15 minute travelogue that is ‘A Trembling Rose’, which takes in a plethora of unified headspaces in richly cinematic style.

Longterm Hey Colossus fan Mark Lanegan makes an appearance amidst the languid and sun-soaked denouement of ‘The Mirror’, the existential gravitas of his tones entirely at home in these revelatory surroundings. Fittingly for a band who operate entirely by their own co-ordinates, 'Dances / Curses' is released on bassist Joe Thompson’s own Wrong Speed Records (and Learning Curve Records in the US), his latest such venture in a lifetime of steadfast belief in the DIY maxim, “It's 100% time for all bands to take control of their shit” he notes. All the tools are there to do it yourself. Back your own horse. It's practical. It's positive. There's a chance things will never be the same, if change doesn't happen now it never will.”

True to form for a band in full control, 'Dances / Curses' is far from the kind of sprawling psych opus that exists purely due to the band being too baked, biased or blasé to edit it down. Indeed, this serendipitous record marks something even these six musicians never necessarily intended - a work in the tradition of the double album with an element of mystery, a record that somehow changes itself every time it returns to the shelf. Somewhere on the great continuum between Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You and Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through "The Secret Life Of Plants", somewhere between the dances of aspiration and the curses of reality, Hey Colossus have created their finest alchemical achievement to date.

TRACK LISTING

1. Eyeball Dance
2. Donkey Jaw
3. Medal
4. Dreamer Is Lying In State
5. Nine Is Nine
6. A Trembling Rose
7. A Trembling Rose (Reprise)
8. The Mirror
9. Revelation Day
10. Stylites In Reverse
11. U Cowboy
12. Dead Songs For Dead Sires
13. Blood Red Madrigal
14. Tied In A Firing Line

Coming out of London and the South West of England, Hey Colossus are one of Europe's great live bands. Since 2003 the 6-piece has been driving around the continent with their “pirate ship” backline of broken amps and triple-guitar drang, elevating audiences in every type of venue imaginable; a doctor’s waiting room in Salford, an industrial unit in Liege and a vast field next to a river in Portugal. Wherever they may roam.Four Bibles is their twelfth studio album and the first to be released by London label ALTER, whose sole proprietor (the electronic producer Helm) encountered the group at their first gig in 2003.

Recorded by Ben Turner at Space Wolf Studios in Somerset, it's their most direct album yet and follows a well-documented trajectory of evolution that began (in the truest sense) with 2011’s RRR for Riot Season and continued across three albums for Rocket Recordings. Lead vocalist Paul Sykes sounds more in focus than before, dialling down the effects and using reverb / delay to carry his lyrics rather than smother. The band has also fine-tuned to leave some room for extra depth. Piano, electronics and violin (by Daniel O'Sullivan of This is not This Heat / Grumbling Fur) all find a way in amongst a familiar mesh of interlacing guitars, wrapped round a taut rhythm section. Like every other Hey Colossus record before, the line-up has altered and the sounds reflect this. From the weight of “Memory Gore”, to the subtlety and swag of “It's a Low”, via the sonic extremes of “Palm Hex/Arndale Chins” this is exactly as the band are live; raging & rail-roading but somehow in control.

Grooves for those who want to dance or for those who want to hug a wall and nod...bleak dystopian imagery submerged in relentless rhythms and low-end rattle. The songs breath life and soul - Hey Colossus have never sounded fresher or more on point.There is a book release to coincide with the album written by bass player (and founding member) Joe Thompson. It's part of a new series called “Sleevenotes” by Pomona Publishing and the first four are out this year. Joe’s book sits alongside other contributions by Bob Stanley (St Etienne), Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees/Solo), David Gedge (The Wedding Present) and contains a diary of the years leading up to the release of this record. Touring with bands Sumac and Grey Hairs through Europe, recording the album, line-up changes, the band's history and the big question is answered: Why? 

TRACK LISTING

1. Bees Around The Lime Tree
2. Memory Gore
3. Confession Bay
4. It's A Low
5. (Decompression)
6. Carcass
7. The Golden Bough
8. Palm Hex / Arndale Chins
9. Babes Of The Plague
10. Four Bibles