In today’s instantly
downloadable and quickly consumed culture, bands like Anberlin are a dying
breed. Over the course of six years and four full-lengths (including last
year’s B-side compilation Lost Songs),
the band have established themselves as one of alternative rock’s most exciting
acts and as a band who refuse to limit themselves to one specific scene or
sound... and it’s paid off. If the band reinvented themselves with last year’s
sprawling album Cities—which debuted
in the Billboard Top 20 and sold 34,000 copies its first week of
release—they’ve transcended that sound with New
Surrender. In fact, their latest album that shows the band reconciling all
of their seemingly disparate moods into a cohesive blend of music that will
lull you to sleep with gentle harmonies one minute and shake you to the core
via raw, distortion-drenched rock riffage the next.
This control of
dynamics has embodied Anberlin’s music since their 2003 debut Blueprints For The Black Market which
instantly caught on with fans of emotional music who didn’t want to be fed the
same musical clichés—oh, and touring alongside acts like Fall Out Boy and My
Chemical Romance to support that album didn’t hurt either. After playing
literally hundreds of shows and growing as both musicians and people the band
released their sophomore album Never Take
Friendship Personal in 2005. Markedly more mature both musically and
lyrically, that album established Anberlin as more than another underground
sensation and showed that there was no limit to what the band could achieve.
This same trend was evident with last year’s mainstream breakthrough Cities, which showed the band
progressing even more and expanding their musical vision exponentially.
All this brings us to
New Surrender. Although the album
retains the Anberlin sound that fans have grown to love, in many ways it’s also
an album of firsts that marks the next chapter in the band’s illustrious
history. For example, after working for years exclusively with longtime
producer/friend Aaron Sprinkle this time around the band decided to enlist
legendary producer Neal Avron (Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard, New Found Glory) to
capture their sound. Additionally, after selling 435,000 albums on the
well-respected indie label Tooth And Nail, with New Surrender the band decided it was finally time for them to step
up to a major label—and although they had been courted by various majors for
years, the band decided to go with Universal Republic. “At Tooth And Nail there
was a glass ceiling and there was no way to get our music out to all the people
we wanted to reach,” Christian explains when asked about the band’s decision to
change labels. “ To us, Universal Republic represents a sense of stability in
this turbulent era for music: The staff is going nowhere, the label is here to
stay and they have proven time and time again that they can take bands to the
people—and that is where we belong... among the people.”
“The whole album is
conceptualized around the theme of a new surrender in the sense that everyone
in their lives has something they know they have to give up,” responds
Christian when asked about the title of the band’s latest opus. “There’s something that’s holding each
of us back from who we could become, so I think each song kind of tackles that
theme of surrendering parts of life whether it’s a person or a vice.” In order
to capture this idea, the band—which also features guitarist Joseph Milligan,
bassist Deon Rexroat, drummer Nathan Young and new addition and former
Acceptance guitarist Christian McAlhaney—spent three months in the studio with
Avron carefully crafting their most fully realized effort to date.
In fact, from the
equally cathartic and melodic track “Bittersweet Memory” to the soon-to-be
summertime anthem “Haight Street” and acoustic ballad “Younglife,” New Surrender is the most varied album
of the band’s career—something they credit largely to the new addition of
McAlhaney, who has solidified the band’s lineup and become an integral part of
the songwriting process. “I think it just felt right,” McAlhaney responds when
asked when it was like to be thrown into a songwriting team of Christian and
Milligan, who have been writing together for nearly thirteen years.
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