THESE NEW PURITANS - CROOKED WING - DOMINO

These New Puritans debut new song “Wild Fields,” a final preview of their forthcoming new album Crooked Wing, released Friday, May 23 via Domino.

“‘Wild Fields’ is a bit of an outlier on the album, in that it’s quite a traditional song,” says Jack Barnett. “It ends with the words “come down from crystal heavens above,” which is a quotation from William Byrd’s lament for Thomas Tallis. When I googled it to check the reference, it just showed me endless advice about crystal meth withdrawal. Those are the only ads I see now. So this song has a lot to answer for.”

Crooked Wing is the long-awaited fifth album by Essex brothers Jack and George Barnett - their first in six years. Produced by Jack Barnett and Bark Psychosis pioneer Graham Sutton and executive produced by George Barnett, it ranges from brutal to beautiful, and cements TNP’s reputation for visionary music that defies categorization and convention. It features an unpredictable lineup of guest musicians such as Caroline Polachek and veteran jazz double-bassist Chris Laurence. “Wild Fields” follows the previously released singles “A Season In Hell,” “Bells” and “Industrial Love Song” (feat. Caroline Polachek).

“The album was recorded on industrial estates, in churches, studios, circus wagons and cheap hotel rooms,” says Jack. “I’m sure each one left their mark somehow. It starts with a boy soprano singing from underground. Someone said to me it’s like he’s rising up and taking you on a guided tour of all of this filth and heaven, life and death, humans and machines, moments of intensity and moments of stillness. All these contradictions. Then he returns back where he came from in the last track, back under the earth, back to silence. I didn’t mean it to be that, but I like that idea.”

Reuniting with Graham Sutton - who produced the band’s seminal albums Hidden and Field Of Reeds - on Crooked Wing the band worked extensively on the record’s detailed textures, but with cinematic breadth and scope. On a These New Puritans album, any one song can contain influences from jazz, electronica, classical, industrial music, hip hop, or surrealist inversions of classic crooned balladry, without any one being overwhelmingly obvious.

“It’s a DIY album that doesn’t sound like a DIY album,” says George. “It’s a pair of enthusiastic amateurs doing what they want, oblivious to the world. Jack on a piano, me smashing the living daylights out of some drums. More than anything it is pure and it's direct.”

Central to the album’s sound is a field recording Jack made of the bells of an ancient Eastern Orthodox Church, alongside glimmering pitched percussion, pipe organ, and occasional flashes of massed drums and clanking chains. Pushing the beautiful up against the brutal, the lullaby with the cacophony, has always been These New Puritans’ way.