Therapy? have shared their video for new single Joy, the first taste of their forthcoming 16th studio album Hard Cold Fire.
The follow-up to 2018's Cleave, Hard Cold Fire is set for release on May 5 via Marshall Records.
"We didn't want to make a lockdown record,” says vocalist/guitarist Andy Cairns, “because people have been through enough. When we began to rehearse the songs, we realised there was an empathetic quality to them. We wanted to make something that was a bit more relatable, and less standoffish and claustrophobic - which we have a history of, and it stands in places - but we wanted to make something more approachable and open."
The rather bleak opening verse of the album's first single reads:
'Another day
Another deadener
Another dull routine
The same grey ritual
Tethered to the pantomime of Western ennui'
Cairns says: "Joy started with a term from Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, this wonderful line: 'habit is a great deadener'. I just love that word, 'dead-en-er'. It's an amazing word. People get themselves into these habits, and the next thing you know, their life is over and they've only lived in a very small circle of experience, often through choice, which is scary."
Watch the video for Joy below:
To tie in with the album's May release, Therapy? will embark on a short series of in-store record shop gigs.
The trio will play:
May 08: Bristol, Rough Trade
May 09: Nottingham, Rough Trade
May 10: London, Banquet Records
May 11: Oxford, Truck
The album artwork and track-listing can be seen below:
1. They Shoot the Terrible Master
2. Woe
3. Joy
4. Bewildered Herd
5. Two Wounded Animals
6. To Disappear
7. Mongrel
8. Poundland of Hope and Glory
9. Ugly
10. Days Kollaps
