After making a rapturous comeback earlier this year with their stunning new singles ‘No Angels’ and ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’, The Big Pink have now announced the plans for their long-awaited third studio album ‘The Love That’s Ours’, their first in a decade, alongside the vibrant new effort ‘Rage’.
Marking their first full-length release since 2012’s ‘Future This’, The Big Pink are looking to make this new phase in their journey their biggest yet. Produced by Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air, Phoenix), the record will include a host of guest collaborators, including Jamie T, Jamie Hince (The Kills), Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Ryn Weaver, Mary Charteris, Ed Harcourt and many more, all aiming to make this new release their most memorable to date.
Speaking about the new album, frontman Robbie Furze said, “Somehow we got here! Our record is about to be released. Thank f**k for that! Getting to this point has been one of the craziest journeys in my life. I truly thought this day would never come. I got so lost, so confused, went down so many rabbit holes, at times running completely blind, so much so that I nearly lost everything that was ever important to me, everything I ever truly loved. This record symbolises so much, it’s my flag on top of the summit. It shows that I finally understand what is truly important. This is the soundtrack of my journey to get here. It was frightening but beautiful at the same time, full of fun, but hand-in-hand full of terror and sadness. The outcome is that I’m incredibly proud of this work that came out of all of it. I think these may be the best songs that I’ve ever written, they’re certainly the most honest. I would love to thank everyone who was involved in this record because without them we would have never got to this point and maybe I would have not been here at all. Thank you.” Rx
Showcased by the new lead single ‘Rage’, this new cut truly defines the feelings and emotions the band have been exploring since ‘Future This’. Channelling the raw and urgent frustrations Furze experienced these last few years, it perfectly encompasses the direction of their newest full-length and stands as one of the hallmarks of their newest collection.
Watch the video for ‘Rage’ – BELOW:
Adding about ‘Rage’, Furze said, “This was the first song I wrote with the incredible Ryn Weaver. I met Ryn out one night in L.A. We locked in on each other at some stupid party and I think we truly fell in love with each other. Not in a sexual way, but in a brother-sister way. We stayed up all night chatting about music and played one another our ideas. We just got each other, it was magical. Ryn is probably the most talented individual I have ever had the luck to have worked with. She effortlessly comes up with these beautiful melodies, they just spill out of her, and her lyric writing is out of this world. I would just sit there trying to keep up with this whirlwind of creativity. We would work long, long sessions, sometimes 12-18 hours, and she wouldn’t let us stop until the track was done. ‘Rage’ came from one of those sessions. We spoke at length about where we were in our lives and how confusing the world was, we were both struggling in love and life at the time and we thought let’s RAGE against these feelings, lets take the power back. It’s really a “fuck you!” track. It’s one of my favourites on the record.”
‘The Love That’s Ours’ – Tracklisting
How Far Weve Come
No Angels
Love Spins On Its Axis
Rage
Outside In
Im Not Away To Stay Away
Safe and Sound
Murder
Back To My Arms
Even If I Wanted To
Lucky One
A decade is a long time in music.
One listen to The Big Pink’s latest offerings, however, and the ten years since we last heard from them melt away. Grandeur mixed with melancholy, singalong tunes tinged with nagging doubt, dreamlike atmosphere and pure noise, electronic dystopia shrouding a spirit of hope, all driven by the big questions on identity, purpose and belonging… It’s all in there. And those ten years out of view have brought to The Big Pink a new character: experience.
“The first album was that classic thing: is this actually happening?” says Robbie Furze, the sole founder member since his musical partner Milo Cordell left in 2013, of The Big Pink’s 2009 breakthrough ‘A Brief History of Love’. “There were no expectations, just two best friends working on music together, and to us it felt like an explosion. Then came the second record [Future This, 2012], which we thought we could bash out because we were now so busy on tour, but we soon realised that it didn’t have the same romance or importance of the first record and that affected Milo deeply. I remember doing the first gigs after Future This and thinking: something doesn’t feel right here. We were trying to get the songs written as quickly as possible and we neglected the essence of The Big Pink in the process.”
After a huge tour of Asia that, in Furze’s words, ‘finished us off,’ he and Cordell decided to step away from music; to avoid the fate of so many bands who fall into the recording-touring treadmill and kill the passion that first opened their hearts along the way. There was no major split, no blazing rows presented to the world as musical differences, just an understanding that it was time to move on.
Milo Cordell concentrated on running his record label Merok, while Furze felt a strong urge to change the backdrop and start anew. “I fell into DJing in Los Angeles. London was on a bit of a downer at the time, especially if you were in a rock band, and there seemed to be a lot of English musicians moving to LA – it was the place to be. A friend of mine was opening a bar in Silverlake called Tenants of the Trees and it felt like the beginning of a movement. It had the beautiful models, the token celebs, the bands I love… There I was with Black Motorcycle Club and Queens of the Stone Age, and I was Robbie from the Big Pink, DJing on Tuesday nights. It was fun.” For a moment, Furze considered a future as a club owner before realising that he really should be getting back to making music of his own.
“And that’s when things started happening again because there are a lot of lost artists in LA; people who have gone out there with their talent and lost their way. LA’s great when you’re on the up but if you find yourself having fallen out of favour it can be hard to get back on the proverbial treadmill. But if you can get those people in the room for a moment, lovely things can emerge from the chaos.”
The Big Pink’s drummer Akiko Matsuura was back on board while Charlie Barker, a visual artist from Nottingham, joined on bass guitar. Furze bounced musical ideas off a network of friends either visiting or resident in Los Angeles including Jamie Hince from the Kills, Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jamie T and Joel Amey from Wolf Alice, the latter suggesting that Furze resurrect The Big Pink to do a US tour with Wolf Alice in 2018. “That reinvigorated me because going on tour is like going to war: it’s so hard but you feel invigorated by the pain, especially if you are back on a support tour, shlepping your own amplifiers around. It gives you a tangible feeling on what it means to be a musician.”
‘The Love That’s Ours’, one of the most creative and multi-faceted rock albums of recent times, has offered a rebirth for Robbie Furze. He wants it all back: the festivals, the world tours, the Glastonbury spots. There is a song on the record called ‘Lucky One’, which is about a friend of mine who died of a heroin overdose. Los Angeles is such an aggressive town that people do lose themselves. I found my calling again, and the confidence needed to write these songs. So I was the lucky one because that could have been me. The record became my ticket out of LA, my situation – and myself. From there, I came home.”
And so begins a new chapter for The Big Pink…
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