With their first studio album in ten years, ‘The Love That’s Ours’ set to arrive on September 30th, The Big Pink have now unveiled the intimate new live video for their most recent single, ‘Safe and Sound’.
Adopting a warm and passionate piano-led aesthetic for their newest offering, this rousing live performance perfectly illustrates the broad and heartfelt approach the band have injected into their latest full-length. Recorded and produced by Tom Donovan (Monster Florence) and filmed and edited by Rob Humm, this stunning rendition opens up the raw and passionate intensity of the original recording, and highlights one of their most tender compositions to date.
Speaking about the new live video, they added, “Live videos can be a little daunting because you are unbelievably exposed to the camera, there’s no hiding in the shadows or relying on the producer to give you that little needed tweak. I think doing it live for this song made the most sense because ‘Safe and Sound’ is the most exposed I’ve ever let myself be in a song. It was a conscious decision to record this one with minimal production. It’s a departure from what The Big Pink’s signature sound is and putting it out makes me feel as raw and exposed as the song itself because I don’t know how it’s going to be received. I’ve bared my soul in this one. When I wrote it I was struggling to comprehend losing everything, my wife, my family, my career, it was all on the line at that point. All the layers in my life, all of that had to come down in order to reconnect with what was most important to me. I think that’s why this live video works so well because it mirrors the rawness we left in the recording of the song. It was a beautiful day recording in the magical riverside studio in Southend, UK. Recorded and produced by Tom Donovan and filmed and edited by Rob Humm.”
Watch the ‘Safe and Sound’ live performance video – BELOW:
Marking their first full-length release since 2012’s ‘Future This’, The Big Pink are looking to make ‘The Love That’s Ours’ the biggest phase in their journey 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.
The Big Pink have also announced an official album release party, taking place on October 5th, in partnership with DICE, at London’s Outernet. Tickets available HERE
‘The Love That’s Ours’ – Tracklisting
How Far We’ve Come
No Angels
Love Spins On Its Axis
Rage
Outside In
I’m 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 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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