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Photo credit: Stefan Roberts

NZ’s own TERRIBLE SONS announce new album & share new song

6 mins read

Ōtautahi/Christchurch husband-and-wife, Terrible Sons announce their anticipated debut album The Raft Is Not The Shore due out on April 28th on Canadian label Nettwerk. With truly stunning art work by Spanish Illustrator, Cinta Arribas. The record was recorded in their home studio, with producer Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams, Nadia Reid) featuring a host of exceptional Ōtautahi musicians: Jo Barus, Joe McCallumCam Pearce, Chris Wethey. Pre-order for the album is available HERE and at terriblesons.com

Woven throughout by the twin ideas of the passing of time and water, The Raft Is Not The Shore signals a new chapter of intentional songwriting in the duo’s discography. After three EPs including 2021’s much-lauded Mass, this debut album came together during the pandemic as the duo attempted to “write closer together, about what we know, what was moving us at the time, and putting ourselves in vulnerable spaces,” says Matt Barus. The band had a fluid list of titles but the only one that stuck was “The Raft Is Not The Shore”, a line from a Buddhist parable between a Vietnamese and American, two poets and activists. “One of the meanings was the idea to hold your beliefs lightly. In light of the entrenched spaces we find ourselves in 2022/23, this felt prescient and gave further meaning to our songs. To be willing to walk in another’s shoes, or to at least imagine, was something we wanted to hold ourselves to.”  

Terrible Sons has also shared the fourth single off the album, the ominous ‘Asperatus.’ The song is inspired by an image of a particular cloud formation that may follow a storm – it presents as ‘roughness’ but generally dissipates without developing further. Yearning, yet with the tremor of what has transpired still lingering in the air.

When the pandemic struck, LA Mitchell and Matt Barus, together known as Terrible Sons, had to wait two years between flights. At the time they had just finished working on an EP with producer/guitarist Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams, Jen Cloher) and their full band of drummer Jo McCullum (Nadia Reid, The Veils etc) and brother, bassist and backing vocalist Jo Barus (Dave Dobbyn). So flushed with the experience of having Tom at the helm that they promptly booked in a session for a full album of yet-to-be written songs. However, with New Zealand’s strict lockdown and travel rules in place, the recordings would take much longer than the songs took to write. Tom, in Auckland, had to book and rebook flights, waiting for gaps in the travel ban before he could return to complete the sessions in Christchurch. Six flights later, followed by six months of back-and-forth mixing, and the album is finally complete.

The playlist given to the band before the recording has a few clues as to the sound of the album. Simon & Garfunkel, Dr JohnBill Withers and Bobbie Gentry are there, alongside Blake Mills and Olafur Arnalds. The album looks to the past but is irrevocably modern, with glitches courtesy of Tom and concerns that are equally releTerrible Sons is the moniker for husband/wife duo Matthew Barus (The Dukes) and Lauren Barus (L.A. Mitchell, Fly My Pretties), who work and live with their two children in an intentional community near Christchurch. Having clocked up over 18 million streams on previous singles since 2018, the quietly accomplished band is signed to Nettwerk Music Group. The band’s string of sparse, yet intimate modern folk EP releases include their most recent, and much-lauded third EP Mass. vant now as they were fifty years ago. There’s strings, space and quiet, offset with moments of frenetic joy.

Praise for Terrible Sons:

“The Christchurch husband-and-wife folk duo have been quietly taking over the world, one stream at a time.” – Karl PuschmannViva Magazine

“Terrible Sons makes music that’s quite tender, almost fragile. It’s steeped in folk traditions and sometimes, like on their song ‘What a Friend’, it’s quite breathtaking.” – Tony Stamp, RNZ The Sampler

“The EP Mass is honest and beautifully crafted.” – James Belfield, Waiheke Weekender

“Mass is a stark, quiet collection of deeply romantic songs that hark back to the sweeping indie glory of Kings of Convenience and Feist. It’s the kind of music that feels destined to soundtrack the idiosyncratic indie cinema of the mid-2000s. It’s luscious, organic and so, so intimate.” – Tone Deaf

“Terrible Sons craft songs like complex beautiful dioramas constructed from the emotional stuff of life.” – American Pancake

Terrible Sons – The Raft Is Not The Shore

Out April 28th via Nettwerk

1. Birdsong
2. Sunset Swimming
3. Easy Love
4. Asperatus
5. You Can Choose
6. Yelling In The Wilderness
7. Alright, Alright
8. Hold Your Light High
9. Tomorrow Always Comes
10. Watching and Watching
11. Young Blossom

Terrible Sons Online: 
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