Listen: These New Puritans’ First Record in 6 Years. The Barnett brothers are back with a new album where the popular and the experimental coexist – and it’s a masterpiece that breaks the rules.
It’s been six long years since experimental post-punk group These New Puritans released their last album, and now they’re back with a fourth record, Inside the Rose featuring songs about “beauty, transcendence, desire, oblivion, ecstasy, and eyes”, according to frontman Jack Barnett.
The heart of the upcoming album is the single “Where the Trees Are on Fire”, a song inspired by a dream Barnett had about an alluvial land near his Essex hometown Leigh-on-Sea called Two Tree Island. In the dream, the trees are, as mentioned in the culminating song title, on fire, and the song as a whole sounds something like a haunting lullaby.
The band only consists of twin brothers Jack Barnett and George Barnett, as keyboardist Thomas Hein departed from the group back in 2016, which makes this the first record These New Puritans put out as a duo. Jack told Dazed that this album much closer to how they used to work when the brothers were younger, a time where they made music on an old tape machine. Jack compares the record to their earlier record Hidden, released in 2010. Jack explained that he wanted to make something that “embraces the extremes” of their music, where both elements of pop and experimental music coexist at the same time. According to George, Inside the Rose is “a much sexier record”, a more honest and open straight-to-the-point, in-your-face kind of gig. Out on March 22nd, ‘Inside The Rose’ is accompanied by a new short film allowing fans a glimpse in the process behind the record. Directed by the award-winning photographer Harley Weir in collaboration with George Barnett.
A new lyric music video for one of their singles “Anti-Gravity” is out as well, featuring the Barnett brothers’ reflections on moving water, accompanied by the song’s mystifying and hypnotizing tune.
This new record explores things a lot deeper than what you’d usually find in most music; the pursuit of hidden truth, apocalypse, communion, culture, and probably more to come considering the band’s ambition and excitement for the album. These New Puritans wants to fight against writing songs for the mere sake of streams – they’re breaking boundaries with their new music, proving that there’s no formula to creating and releasing.
Inside the Rose will be released on the 22nd of March, 2019.