With their new album The Witness out Sept 3rd via Joyful Noise Recordings, Montreal trio SUUNS – Ben Shemie, Joe Yarmush, and Liam O’Neill – are sharing their new single Clarity, which follows on from previous tracks C-Thru and Witness Protection. The band also are set to play UK shows in London, Glasgow and Manchester this October.
Speaking about ‘Clarity’, Ben Shemie says: “This song is the sun that our record orbits around. It’s an introspective jam full of ambition and restraint. One might call it a departure for the band, but more likely it is us finding ourselves.”
“We worked on ‘Clarity’ after we had set the stage with its sister songs, ‘Third Stream’ and ‘Go To My Head’… We let the drum machine play, we let Mathieu Charbonneau’s DX-7 do its thing, Erik Hove’s saxophone the ineluctable cherry on top; we weren’t afraid to leave space and let the melody guide the song. It’s the most natural sounding expression of what we were going for on this record.” -Liam O’Neill SUUNS
Album ‘The Witness’ shows SUUNS in their most comfortable, candid, offbeat state. Self-recorded and produced by the band across most of last year, 2020 was a period that provided an extended period of solitude and reflection. ‘The Witness’ holds a magnifying glass to SUUNS own default state of playing and performing, in doing so also providing a swift departure from the feel of previous album Felt.
Max Henry departed the group as a full-time member in 2018 and Shemie now lives in Paris, therefore a challenge presented itself for the trio to connect once again, socially and creatively. There is a continuous vibe over the notion of separate chapters throughout the album, a level of introspective relaxation, of returning to the band’s primal instincts. And as a band that’s known for its cryptic magnetism, ‘The Witness’ marks SUUNS’ most generous yet bare, affecting work to date.
Listen to ‘Clarity’ via streaming services here: https://lnk.to/SUUNS-Clarity
Pre-order The Witness here
