The socially distanced video for lead track "Running Into You" was co-directed by Andy Knowles & Nick Scott and features acclaimed actor Sam Riley. Watch and listen HERE.
Talking about the video, The Cribs said: "Well, we've been gone for the last couple of years, so we wanted to channel the spirit of the inevitable 'Cribs-mania' which we are sure the news of our comeback will precipitate...hence the full on "media takeover" theme of the video...It was great to work with Sam again, our relationship with him goes all the way back to our very first headline tour which we undertook along with his band 10,000 Things - and we have considered him part of the family ever since. It's an honor to have him involved."
Having released their Steve Albini engineered album 24-7 Rock Star Shit, their fourth consecutive UK top 10 album, in August 2017 the multiple Q and NME Award winning band almost immediately parted company with their long time UK management and found themselves stuck in what Gary describes as a “legal morass,” unable to record or release new music, so touring wasn’t an option. That meant 18 months of inaction. “At one point we were actually so disillusioned with what had happened, we didn't even know if we wanted to get back into the band any more,” says Ryan.
A turning point came in the summer of 2018. The Cribs had been invited to support Foo Fighters at Manchester's Etihad Stadium, in what could very well have been the band's last hurrah. Enter Dave Grohl. Hanging out backstage, chatting over a few post-show drinks, The Cribs confided their recent struggles to their new friend. “Dave was just like, ‘Forget about all that business stuff, just come out to LA and make a record at our studio’ – Dave made that offer to us,” Ryan recalls.
The three brothers are now scattered over nearly 5,000 miles, with Gary in Portland, Oregon, Ryan in Queens, New York and Ross in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. When they gathered in the UK for a family Christmas in December 2018, they began working on songs in Ross’s garage, and found the creative juices flowing.
Songs came together fast, and when they finally contacted the Foo Fighters and said they’d be keen to take them up on the offer, they were offered a window of studio time in April 2019 – a fixed date to work towards, and the impetus for a final push to sort out the miasma of business mess.
Their new found autonomy extended to the recording process itself – this is the first album to be entirely self-produced by the band. Engineered by James Brown (Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys) and mixed by frequent Cribs collaborator John O'Mahony (who also worked on 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever' and 'For All My Sisters') the record took shape over two weeks in LA, plus an extra week of overdubs at Halfling Studios in Portland.
The track 'Goodbye' was “our way of saying ‘goodbye’ to that period of our lives. Let's move on,” says Ross.
Familiar friend Lee Ranaldo, ex-member of Sonic Youth, did spoken word verses on 2007 track "Be Safe." Here, Ranaldo plays guitar on "I Don’t Know Who I Am"– and Be Safe Part II (Be Safer?) it ain’t. The song started out as a jam in Ross’s garage which the brothers later tracked at 606, before Ranaldo added guitar over the recording at Sonic Youth’s Hoboken studio, and a few backing vocals for good measure.
Album discography: The Cribs (2004), The New Fellas (2005), Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever (2007), Ignore The Ignorant (2009), In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull (2012), For All My Sisters (2015), 24-7 Rock Star Shit (2017).
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