This Is The Kit, the group led by Paris-based bandleader Kate Stables, today announced the band’s new album Careful of Your Keepers–produced by Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals)–will be released on June 9th, 2023, via Rough Trade Records. The album’s propulsive yet introspective lead single ‘Inside Outside’ finds Stables as magnetic as ever, joined once again by her stalwart band of Rozi Plain(bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums), and accented by a cascading horn quartet arrangement by Jesse Vernon. The track arrives alongside a video directed by Hannah Owen that features Stables and a pair of dancers capturing the song’s ebullient charm. Stables explained the song’s reflective lyrics:
“What makes things happen? How much choice do we have? Electricity and chemistry that is out of our control? Chewing. Choosing. Internal forces or external ones? Do we just behave the way people expect us to behave?
Or do they pre-empt what’s happening? Before it’s happened? Because they can see it in us before we know it ourselves? Big change that has been brewing for longer than we realise. Were we just ignoring it? Was it so deeply buried? Or did we see it all along but chose to ignore it? How much does anything change? Or is it just the way we see it that changes?”
Careful Of Your Keepers is daring and soft, cutting and warm–a wild feat of complexity and combined dispositions. There’s a shared language of the band’s family experience that is as audible as ever in these recordings, which boast beautiful instrumental performances that still leave the nuanced space required for Stables’ vocals to live at the forefront. “The album was nearly called Goodbye Bite. And in a way it still is,” says Stables. “I went for Careful of Your Keepers in the end. It’s one of my favourite songs on the album, a song that for me holds the general feeling of the album as a whole. The fragility of things. Of situations. Of relationships. Of humans. What we do to look after each other and ourselves. The passing of time and what that does to us, and how we live our lives going forward.”
Guiding the ship through changing seas is producer Rhys. Stables described his role as being a “tonesetter,” watchful and attentive to the band dynamics while making sure to always follow a hunch for where a new sound could find its place in the recording. “I’ve always loved the idea of working with him somehow, and when this album started getting planned, I realized that maybe this was my chance to reach out and see if he was up for working together,” Stables explains. “And he was! As if that wasn’t enough, he was also up for doing a bit of singing on the record, which totally blew my mind and made my year. His way with harmony and melody and the tone and quality of his voice is a totally killer combo.”
“They are so ridiculously talented–and every member is a great producer in their own right–so it was just a matter of trying to capture the magic they make when playing live together,” Rhys says of the recording process. “Their playing is by default so thoughtful and complimentary in terms of respect to each other’s parts and to the integrity of the songs themselves that it creates a beautiful foundation of often cosmic interplay that’s always in aid of Kate’s voice and vision as a songwriter.”
Careful Of Your Keepers will be available on dark green vinyl variant exclusive to indie record stores, an eco-colored vinyl exclusive to the webstore, and standard black vinyl and CD; pre-order now here: https://thisisthekit.ffm.to/carefulofyourkeepers
Álbum Track Listing
Goodbye Bite
Inside Outside
Take You To Sleep
More Change
This is When The Sky Gets Big
Scabby Head and Legs
Careful of Your Keepers
Doomed Or More Doomed
Stuck in a Room
Dibs
Kate Stables (lead vocals / guitar) is joined by her stalwart band of not-sick-of-each-other-yet friends Rozi Leyden (bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums)
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