It was in December 2022 that The Staves celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album Dead & Born & Grown – a strange and beautiful period in the lives of sisters and band members Jessica, Camilla and Emily Staveley-Taylor, making their fourth album All Now with the same organic vulnerability as that first record: except now everything was different, and they kind of were too.
All Now emerges, bold and bright, from a period of quiet, which followed a period of chaos, for the band. When Good Woman was released in 2021, to positive reviews, it felt like “an echoing silence” to share such a cathartic album with a world shut down. So The Staves had to retreat, again, and actually wrestle with everything they had been through.
The result? An album as rich and honest as all the most profound music by The Staves scattered across albums for the last decade, calcified here into something special.
But the most thrilling part of this album, is that the hardest pills to swallow, here, almost have a sweeter taste. Once you’ve survived the climb to the top, learned from the journey, you may as well enjoy the view. “When you sing about hesitation and fear, there’s a lot of power in not making it sound fearful and being quite steadfast instead,” says Camilla. “It feels like an act of taking control.” With All Now, there’s no letting go.
All Now emerges, bold and bright, from a period of quiet, which followed a period of chaos, for the band. When Good Woman was released in 2021, to positive reviews, it felt like “an echoing silence” to share such a cathartic album with a world shut down. So The Staves had to retreat, again, and actually wrestle with everything they had been through.
The result? An album as rich and honest as all the most profound music by The Staves scattered across albums for the last decade, calcified here into something special.
But the most thrilling part of this album, is that the hardest pills to swallow, here, almost have a sweeter taste. Once you’ve survived the climb to the top, learned from the journey, you may as well enjoy the view. “When you sing about hesitation and fear, there’s a lot of power in not making it sound fearful and being quite steadfast instead,” says Camilla. “It feels like an act of taking control.” With All Now, there’s no letting go.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Though it's the vocal interplay between Jessica and Camilla Stavely-Taylor and the relative instrumental minimalism that first comes to mind when you think of The Staves, their formula works just as well when transplanted onto a hefty backdrop of soaring synths and throbbing basses, and 'All Now' is the perfect display of a more hi-nrg version of their trademark sound.TRACK LISTING
Side A
All Now
I Don’t Say It, But I Feel It
Fundamental Memory
Make A Decision
The Echo
Side B
I’ll Never Leave You Alone
After School
Great Wave
Recognise
So Gracefully
The Important One
You Held It All