Announce new studio album Suck On Light, out 27th September
Following the release of new music last month, the acclaimed ARIA Awards winning Australian band Boy & Bear have announced their highly anticipated fourth studio album Suck On Light will be released on 27th September via Nettwerk in Europe.
With this news comes the official video for the upbeat and optimistic new single “Hold Your Nerve”. The video celebrates the return of the Sydney band with an intimate and energetic performance, shot by director Onil Kotian (Angus & Julia Stone’s “Snow” and “Cellar Door”). Filmed in black and white, the video is intercut between scenes of a constantly revolving camera and a series of open-ended abstract, texture-adding visuals. The coloured visuals are lifted from the Suck On Light artwork, which was designed by Leif Podhajsky who is behind the album artwork for artists like Tame Impala, London Grammar and Foals.
WATCH NEW “HOLD YOUR NERVE” VIDEO HERE:
Director Onil Kotian says, “When I first heard 'Hold Your Nerve,' what resonated for me very early on was to be minimal & abstract in the concept - that didn't detract from this energetic rhythmic drive that the song presented. Focusing on generating movement in the video that mirrored the dynamic of the song became the focal point of the execution.”
Boy & Bear guitarist Killian Gavin says of the video, “Making this clip was a real treat. We'd obviously been away from this world for a few years and were keen to rethink how we've gone about clips in the past. We've often layered stories over performances as we felt like it helped make clips more intriguing. But this was different. We wanted to find a way to captivate an audience with just a performance-based clip. It was a challenge we sort of came up with on the spot while shooting Day 1.”
Suck On Light was produced by the band and Collin Dupuis (The Black Keys, Angel Olsen, Ex Hex) at Nashville’s Southern Ground Studios, and mixed in part by Grammy Award-winning mix engineer Tom Elmhirst (St. Vincent, Amy Winehouse, Beck).
Met with an incredible reception from fans and media on release, their lead single “Hold Your Nerve” was instantly added to Australia’s triple j (hitting #1 Most Played on the station) and played on BBC Radio 6 Music. The first new music since the release of 2015’s Limit Of Love, it revealed the personal and professional storm of a band delivering their next album, and one they feared might never come to exist. The band was faced with the challenge of lead vocalist-guitarist Dave Hosking battling a debilitating illness, which drove them to create their finest album to date; a record that takes the trademark analogue warmth of their sound and pushes it to places the Sydney quintet have never explored before.
To protect the purity of their musical vision, the band - which also features the aforementioned guitarist Killian Gavin, drummer Tim Hart, bassist Dave Symes and keyboardist Jon Hart - wrote a brief for the album; a clear memorandum of exactly how they wanted it to sound, and how they would achieve it. “We still wanted ’70s tones, ’70s drum tones and guitar tones, we still wanted to embrace harmonies, but we wanted to push it more into the 21st Century and mess with it a little bit, more than we had in the past,” says Hosking.
While Hosking’s health remains a work in progress, the fact that he and the band have reached this point is nothing short of a triumph. Motivation was never hard to find.
Suck On Light will be available on all formats, you can pre-order from your local retailer and also digitally from here
SUCK ON LIGHT TRACKLISTING:
- Work Of Art
- Suck on Light
- Bird of Paradise
- Telescope
- Dry Eyes
- Long Long Way
- Off My Head
- Bad People
- Hold your Nerve
- Rocking Horse
- BCS
- Vesuvius
Boy & Bear will be hitting the road once again for their global “Hold Your Nerve Tour”. Kicking off in Australia and North America later this year. The tour will then head to the UK and Europe in early 2020. Current list of EU dates below with tickets on-sale now from www.boyandbear.com and all major ticket outlets.
European Tour Dates:
- 5th February 2020 | Antwerp, Belgium @ De Roma
- 6th February 2020 | Utrecht, Netherlands @ Tivoli Vrendenburg
- 7th February 2020 | Nijmegen, Netherlands @ Doornroosje
- 8th February 2020 | Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso Noord
- 11th February 2020 | Paris, France @ Les Etoiles
- 12th February 2020 | Koln, Germany @ Luxor
- 13th February 2020 | Hamburg, Germany @ Knust
- 15th February 2020 | Berlin, Germany @ Lido
- 16th February 2020 | Munich, Germany @ Strom
- 17th February 2020 | Milan, Italy @ Magnolia
- 18th February 2020 | Zurich, Switzerland @ Papiersaal
- 20th February 2020 | Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
- 21st February 2020 | Glasgow, UK @ Glasgow Arts School
- 22nd February 2020 | Nottingham, UK @ Rescue Rooms
- 24th February 2020 | Birmingham, UK @ Institute 3
- 25th February 2020 | Bristol, UK @ Thekla
- 26th February 2020 | London, UK @ Shepherds Bush Empire