THE CRIBS continue their glorious return with new single “I Don’t Know Who I Am”, their second partnership with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, who delivered the astounding spoken word of fan favourite “Be Safe”.
Quintessentially Cribs, spectacularly gripping riffage scores the track’s emotional narrative, before said riff implodes into a mauling noise rock jam.
The Jarmans’ lyrics explore intensely introspective areas here, imprinted upon by the broad and searing vocal talents of Gary Jarman; the vocal array then doubled by Ranaldo’s sensational harmonies, with the track openly centering on the Jarman twins’ disconnect with their “biological paternal lineage – and how that may have shaped our views on masculinity, gender roles, and the men we ultimately grew up to be.”
“I Don’t Know Who I Am” also involves layers of Ranaldo’s white-noise guitar atop Ryan Jarman’s display and, while it evinces similar feelings of confusion and desperation to “Be Safe”, this is an entirely different entity to the 2007 track.
The band say that this collaboration was stumbled upon in a similarly spontaneous way, a testament to their pride in creating magic from experimenting and improvisation. They said: “We had a recording of a long, improvised noise-jam which we then tried to refine into a more cohesive song structure. Due to the similarities in the writing process, it made us think of Lee again.
“We had initially requested that he play noise guitar over the track, because we wanted to keep it somewhat abstract and create the impression of the melodies just kind of emerging out of the static, but he went beyond the call of duty and also added some beautiful vocal harmonies too, out at the Sonic Youth studio in New Jersey.”
The track comes with the announcement of various instore shows to celebrate the arrival of their eighth album, “Night Network”, with the brothers playing record shops in Leeds, Sheffield and more: see full details below.
These intimate shows are a way for The Cribs to return a favour and support the very stores who supported them.
Of these shows, they say: “Obviously, due to the ever-changing climate we are aware of the fact that these shows may not be able to happen during release week; but one way or another, we 100% guarantee (swear to God, brothers/sisters…) that we will make these shows happen at the earliest possible opportunity, and we will sing and dance and be happy together, whilst supporting our favourite record stores.
“You have our word.”
The list of upcoming instore shows is as follows:
November 11th, Banquet Records, Kingston upon Thames, full band set, TICKETS
November 14th, Action Records’ show at Blitz, Preston, acoustic set, TICKETS
November 15th, Crash Records’ show at the Brudenell, Leeds, acoustic set, TICKETS
November 16th Bear Tree Records’ show at the Foundry, Sheffield, acoustic set, TICKETS
A video for the track has also been released, with frequent collaborator and friend of the band Nick Scott at the helm, and sees appearances from the three brothers as well as Lee Ranaldo. Watch below.
