The concept of home haunts This Is the Kit’s tender, thoughtful seventh studio album, Ghost Coat. “I was interested in exploring our relationship with home,” says frontwoman Kate Stables. “Where home is, or was, where we come from, where we’re going. Sometimes it’s just where you put your bag down, especially for someone who travels a lot. Maybe it’s less to do with a place, and more who you’re with – people that make you feel like you’re at home.”

Recorded at Rockfield Studios in the Wye Valley, south-east Wales, and the first to be self-produced Ghost Coat captures the feeling that, no matter where we are in the world, homesickness can strike at any moment. “Quite often, if I find myself in a new place,” says Stables, “I’ll be really happy to be there, but then I always miss somewhere else which is tugging me away.”

Conversely friendship and community are at the heart of the record, manifesting itself with the voices and contributions of collaborators including Richard Dawson Sam Amidon, guitarist brothers Valentin and Marceau Portron (of Portron Portron Lopez), Ben Howard and Emma Broughton AKA Blumi.

“I was really keen to not only ask people to sing on the album,” says Stables, “but to make sure that you can hear their individual voices. When you hear the voice of someone that means a lot to you, it can destroy you (in a good way) or can make you feel amazing. It makes me happy hearing all the voices, especially because of the themes of friendship.”

The ghostly garment of the title was inspired by a shadow cast by the staircase in Stables’s new home: the phrase appeared in her head and has been echoing around it ever since, like echolalia. “Ghost coat” could refer to “a layer, a garment, a disguise, a memory” – a mysterious presence that guides and watches over us, though its intentions are unknown.

This sense of grace is one of the throughlines of the album: finding peace in the way things have turned out, even if it isn’t what we had planned, and accepting the situations we find ourselves in. It all comes back to the concept of home, and in particular the people we call home. “I hope listeners come away with a sense of shared experience,” says Stables. “I’m someone who is prone to disappearing into a sort of burrow, and it’s hard to know how to get out of the burrow. It’s important that we continue to interact with each other. It’s all about feeling a sense of community with other human beings out there.”

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Safety Valve
Skim a Stone
Catcher
Builders
Lamp Post
Ghost Coat

Side B
Tiny Eyes
Toad in the Hole
Fall Away
Lovely Grub
Fiver
Not Enough is Enough

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This Is The Kit is the project of Kate Stables, born in England and based in Paris. They first gained notice due to heavy radio play on BBC 6 - and have twice had LPs named to 6 Music’s Album Of The Year lists. Later they gained more notice as a hand-picked opening act for The National, Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzalez, Sharon Van Etten and Alexi Murdoch - musicians who share a similar independent streak and warm-hearted approach to creating modern yet timeless music. In North America, they are regulars on US Triple A radio stations like KEXP, indie folk festival line-ups, and tastemaking platforms such as NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.

In the years since ‘Wriggle Out the Restless’ was released in 2010, This Is The Kit have continued to gain momentum. Their 2015 follow-up album, ‘Bashed Out’, was made with The National’s Aaron Dessner (producer for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Mumford & Sons). Stables then sang on The National’s 2019 album/film ‘I Am Easy To Find’ and became a touring member on subsequent live dates. Finally, in 2020, ‘Bashed Out’’s title track became a streaming hit after an impactful needle drop in a key episode of Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ series.

For fans of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Beth Orton, Sharon van Etten, Bon Iver, Father John Misty, Joni Mitchell, Sam Amidon, Anais Mitchell.

This is the first time ‘Wriggle Out the Restless’ has been widely available on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Sometimes The Sea
Easy Pickings
See Here
Waterproof
Spinney
Trick You
The Turnip
White Ash
Earthquake
Sleeping Bag
Moon
Treehouse

This Is The Kit, the group led by Paris-based bandleader Kate Stables, today announced the band’s new album Careful of Your Keepers–produced by Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals)–will be released on June 9th, 2023, via Rough Trade Records. The album’s propulsive yet introspective lead single “Inside Outside” finds Stables as magnetic as ever, joined once again by her stalwart band of Rozi Plain(bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums), and accented by a cascading horn quartet arrangement by Jesse Vernon.

Careful Of Your Keepers is daring and soft, cutting and warm–a wild feat of complexity and combined dispositions. There’s a shared language of the band’s family experience that is as audible as ever in these recordings, which boast beautiful instrumental performances that still leave the nuanced space required for Stables’ vocals to live at the forefront. “The album was nearly called Goodbye Bite. And in a way it still is,” says Stables. “I went for Careful of Your Keepers in the end. It’s one of my favourite songs on the album, a song that for me holds the general feeling of the album as a whole. The fragility of things. Of situations. Of relationships. Of humans. What we do to look after each other and ourselves. The passing of time and what that does to us, and how we live our lives going forward.”

Guiding the ship through changing seas is producer Rhys. Stables described his role as being a “tonesetter,” watchful and attentive to the band dynamics while making sure to always follow a hunch for where a new sound could find its place in the recording. “I’ve always loved the idea of working with him somehow, and when this album started getting planned, I realized that maybe this was my chance to reach out and see if he was up for working together,” Stables explains. “And he was! As if that wasn’t enough, he was also up for doing a bit of singing on the record, which totally blew my mind and made my year. His way with harmony and melody and the tone and quality of his voice is a totally killer combo.”

“They are so ridiculously talented–and every member is a great producer in their own right–so it was just a matter of trying to capture the magic they make when playing live together,” Rhys says of the recording process. “Their playing is by default so thoughtful and complimentary in terms of respect to each other’s parts and to the integrity of the songs themselves that it creates a beautiful foundation of often cosmic interplay that’s always in aid of Kate’s voice and vision as a songwriter.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Careful Of Your Keepers' sees Stables in fine form, confidently traversing the waters we're so familiar with from 2020's brilliant 'Off Off On' but mixed up with a hint of Gruff Rhys' wonderfully psychedelic production and a hint of jagged, art-rock groove. It's a perfect development for Stables' song writing, keeping the elements which we've become so fond of but boldly branching into new areas.

TRACK LISTING

1. Goodbye Bite
2. Inside Outside
3. Take You To Sleep
4. More Change
5. This Is When The Sky Gets Big
6. Scabby Head And Legs
7. Careful Of Your Keepers
8. Doomed Or More Doomed
9. Stuck In A Room
10. Dibs 

Since 2008’s debut album Krülle Bol, This Is The Kit (lead by Kate Stables) have unpicked emotional knots and woven remarkable stories, but even by their high standards, Off Off On is a beautifully clear distillation of Stables’ song-writing gifts.

By the end of 2018, the band had finished touring their last album, the talismanic Moonshine Freeze – leading to Kate’s Ivor Novello nomination, but when it came to Stables’ natural impulse to start the next record, her efforts were diverted by an invitation to join The National on the road for multiple tours and TV appearances – a continuation of the role she took on their album I Am Easy To Find. “It was so brilliant when I was writing to be away from my songs and the responsibility of being in charge of a band or a project – I think it really helped my writing and my getting through whatever I needed to get through.”

Richly illuminating and acutely sensitive to the pulses and currents of life, Off Off On shows This Is The Kit overflowing with ideas. In difficult times, it’s a record that feels like a lifeline, moving against the tide, standing against the storm. Keep going.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's no surprise that 'Off Off On' has already garnered hefty praise from the mainstream music media, with it being a perfectly illustrated collection of skilful songwriting and beautiful performance skills. While Moonshine Freeze and Bashed Out were both stunning, this shows a real maturity and unbelievable advancement of the skills that thrust Staples into the limelight in the first place. An essential addition to any collection.

TRACK LISTING

Found Out
Started Again
This Is What You Did
No Such Thing
Slider
Coming To Get You Nowhere
Carry Us Please
Off Off On
Shinbone Soap
Was Magician
Keep Going

This Is The Kit - the musical project which holds exceptional Paris-via-Bristol songwriter Kate Stables close to its heart - have earned the adoration of peers including Guy Garvey, The National and Sharon van Etten. Their new album and Rough Trade debut, 'Moonshine Freeze', is undoubtedly their most compelling and accomplished to date. Produced by John Parish (PJ Harvey, M Ward, Perfume Genius), it began in the immediate wake of its predecessor, 'Bashed Out', when days after coming off tour last November, Stables and her band (Rozi Plain, Jamie Whitby-Coles, Neil Smith and Jesse D Vernon) headed into the studio in Bristol. Aaron Dessner of The National also features on six of the album tracks.

Though the album’s songs were already written before heading into the studio, Stables says she had no fierce vision for how they should sound, preferring to let them take shape with the input of her band and Parish. “I’m not yet someone who says ‘I want this album to sound like an 80’s French nightclub’,” she says. “All I can do is write the songs and then step back from them and see what themes or patterns there are, then bring those patterns out so it’s a coherent piece of work, sonically and in terms of feeling.” Sonically, Moonshine Freeze is a beguiling mixture of great musical sophistication and something more guileless — children’s games, songs, incantations and snatches of nursery rhymes. Stables’ voice too is a remarkable thing: in its angles there lies an exquisite strangeness reminiscent of Will Oldham, Magnolia Electric Co, Robert Wyatt, Karen Dalton. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Propulsive dual vocal melodies and tenderly treated fuzz guitars punctuate subtle acoustic strums and clashing lo-fi percussion, gradually acquiescing into folky flickering strings and softly accentuated angelic vox. The 11 songs on ‘Moonshine Freeze’ perfectly progress from twee minimalism into hefty, but not overwrought instrumentals. It's a delicate balance to maintain, but it is done flawlessly here.

TRACK LISTING

Bullet Proof
Hotter Colder
Moonshine Freeze
Easy On The Thieves
All Written Out In Numbers
Empty No Teeth
Riddled With Ticks
Two Pence Piece
Show Me So
By My Demon Eye
Solid Grease