New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Crime & the City Solution have announced details of a new album, the killer, that is set for release via Mute on vinyl, CD and digitally on October 20th, 2023, marking their sixth studio album and first in over a decade.
They have also shared the first track from the album "Peace In My Time" and its accompanying video. An elegiac crescendo,
Simon Bonney explains that the track is "about acceptance, more than just peace," before continuing, "I don't think there'll ever be 'peace' - nothing surprises me any more about what people do to each other. But the song is about the acceptance of uncertainty and also an acceptance of who you are."
The album began life as a PhD application that came into fruition when the band's core members
Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams found themselves stuck in their native Australia under one of the world's strictest lockdowns, their nomadic lifestyle put on pause by the pandemic. "
Naturally", says Simon, "I sat and I pieced together a PhD application about decision making in Afghanistan in the late '80s. But, as it turned out, it was actually more of a record than it was a PhD."
The PhD and by turn, the album, found inspiration from Bonney's work delivering aid programs across the Indo-Pacific region. Through that work, he visited places with high levels of violence and the album, in part, acted as a way in which to process the effect that turmoil has had on his psyche and of the "dead bodies in my dreams," that he sings about in the title track. He explains, "There's no mention of American decision making in Afghanistan on the album, but in terms of subject matter there's a lot that's pretty similar; a lot of the record is about loss of faith."
Rather than a dramatic retelling or glorification of the things that
Simon has experienced, the killer focuses on the way they manifest in the everyday and the way humans operate under their shadow. "There's a veneer of normalcy and civilization that people hold onto until they just can't hold on anymore,"
Simon says. "I'm interested in normalcy that exists within what we would consider to be extraordinary situations."
Throughout the record
Simon also weaves in recurring images of uncontrollable natural forces and a farmer who, rather than attempt in vain to control them, seeks to accept and work alongside them. "You can predict to some extent what nature is going to do, you can see the tornado coming, but you can't predict which house it's going to hit," explains Simon.
Working briefly in post-invasion Ukraine following the album's completion, he saw that uncertainty again: "There was a building that was absolutely destroyed by a missile that was half a mile off the actual target. The buildings on either side were perfectly intact, but in the middle was a crater. Yet, in the face of such uncertainty, there was this incredible resilience that seemed to be born of accepting life as it was at that moment, no matter how challenging and uncertain."
"Records, in my experience, seek to answer a question," Bonney continues. "But they usually end up posing new ones too." What questions, then, does Crime & the City Solution's the killer seek to answer? And what new unknowables does it summon? As with all great art, the fine details are the listener's to bestow, but what emerges most of all is the vitality of stillness. Whether faced with the uncaring sublimity of nature, the tempestuous brilliance of a partner, or the everyday impact of human-made horrors, it is better to be a tree, accepting uncertainty, than a king. "Trauma isn't like a rapier scar, it's a festering sore that you've just got to let heal. Art can help with that,"
Simon says.
the killer was recorded in Berlin by the second incarnation of the band to be based in the German capital. Core members
Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams were joined by Frederic Lyenn (piano, bass, synth), Donald Baldie (guitar), Georgio
Valentino (synth, guitar), Chris Hughes (drums, percussion) and Joshua Murphy (piano, guitar), and for the first time they worked with a producer, the legendary
Martin J. Fiedler, who also added synth and Mellotron to the album.The band will embark on a UK/EU tour starting in November. Full dates are listed below.
CRIME & THE CITY SOLUTION LIVE DATES:
11/23/2023 - Haacht, BE, Can't Live In a Living-Room
11/24/2023 - London, UK - The Moth Club
11/25/2023 - Bristol, UK - The Cube Cinema
11/26/2023 - Colchester, UK, - Colchester Arts Centre
11/29/2023 - Paris, FR - La Boule Noire
11/30/2023 - Geneva, CH - L'Usine
12/1/2023 - Karlsruhe, DE - P8
12/2/2023 - Ebensee, AT - Kino Ebensee
12/3/2023 - Zagreb, HR - Vintage Industrial Bar
12/4/2024 - Milano,IT - Arci Bellezza
12/5/2023 - Munich, DE - Muffatwerk
12/6/2023 - Prague, CZ - Fuchs2
12/7/2023 - Hungary, HU - Turbina
12/8/2023 - Linz, AT - Stadtwerkstatt
12/9/2023 - Poznań, PL - 2Progi
12/10/2023 - Warsaw, PL - Niebo
12/12/2023 - Dresden, DE - Chemiefabrik
12/13/2023 - Hamburg, DE - Hafenklang
12/14/2023 - Copenhagen, DK - BETA
12/15/2023 - Oslo, NO - Salt
12/16/2023 - Stockholm, SE - HUS7
12/17/2023 - Gothenburg, SE - Musikens Hus
12/19/2023 - Berlin, DE - Urban Spree
