There might not have been an official break-up announcement from Chichester post-punk outfit TRAAMS, but 2017’s ‘A House On Fire’ signalled something of a natural conclusion for the band. “I couldn’t really write, and I didn’t have the motivation to do anything musical,” explains lead Stuart Hopkins. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t pick up a guitar for two years. I was waiting for that feeling to come back.” But after a number of years apart, the feeling started to do just that, though the constraints of the ongoing pandemic meant their reunion could not simply be a return to their old ways of working. “We had to re-learn how to play together,” Hopkins continues. “It was really quiet and considered, whereas before it’s always been obnoxiously loud. All the things we’d usually relied upon—bass and drums locking in, guitar feedback, shouted words—were no longer applicable in this new way of writing. After our initial reservations, it was incredibly inspiring and freeing.”
The result is Personal Best, the first TRAAMS full-length in seven years, to be released this summer on Fatcat Records. An album somewhere between evolution and revolution, clearly indebted to the TRAAMS style but unafraid of bold changes to break new ground. So while some tracks are clearly rooted in the old aesthetic, others represent a transformation. Take the prudent quiet of lead single ‘Sleeper’, swapping out the ferocity of previous releases in favour of something subtle, more human, infused with a certain light.
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‘Sleeper’ sees Lowly’s Soffie Viemose lend her vocals, and latest single ‘The Light At Night’ is similarly collaborative. “I had this part where I was trying to sound like a preacher, or someone with unequivocal authority, delivering this ranting speech,” Hopkins explains. “And as much as I tried to get a good version of me doing it, it just wasn’t working. It just sounded like I was trying to be Joe [Casey, of Detroit’s Protomartyr].” So, unlike many a post-punk outfit before them, TRAAMS decided against the cheap knock-off routine and did the only thing left. They asked the man himself.
Building from Hopkin’s hushed beginning, the track ratchets tighter and tighter before unspooling in the back half, Casey stepping in with trademark fervour as the tension releases in the song’s spiralling crescendo. “They implicit in desperation,” he sings. “They wasted hours with Jesuits / They partied in the House of Royal Values / They were partitioned by robots / They saw both cross and boss-eyed.” A sermon delivered in total conviction, walking the line between derangement and assurance with the hermetic logic of an unhinged man.
But the lips still move
What did they say?
What’s that old saying?
Kill the body the head dies
The song comes complete with a video directed and edited by Charlotte Gosch and Lee Kiernan, with production from Holding Hands with Horses and further work by Rob French:
Personal Best is out via Fatcat Records on the 22nd July and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.
