Known for their fiercely DIY approach to recording and touring at a time when indie music in the UK was going through a huge commercial boom, The Cribs always stood out from their contemporaries as an altogether more uncompromising prospect.
Nominated for numerous “Best Live Band” awards from the likes of the NME, Q, and Mojo Magazine, for the past 15 years the three brothers have always made touring their number one priority, and have become main stage perennials at festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading/Leeds, Coachella, Lollapalooza and many more.
Now, The Cribs are heading to Australia for the first time in almost 5 years, off the back of their latest and critically praised full length album 24-7 Rock Star Shit, and will be appearing at this year’s Gumball Festival in Newcastle before undertaking a series of small club headline shows around the country – bringing the DIY approach of their new album to the stage.
Their latest album – the quite brilliantly titled 24-7 Rock Star Shit is a bit of a paradox, and it’s also been six years in the making.
It’s the quickest thing they’ve ever recorded, done and dusted straight to tape in five days with legendary Nirvana producer Steve Albini, starting in 2011 during an impromptu two-day studio session and finishing up 5 years later – after the release of 2012 album For All My Sisters. Hinted at the press during interviews of that album campaign the “lost” punk album recordings became a fan myth… until now.
And so, in November 2016, exactly five years after their first visit, they re-entered Electrical Audio Studios with the intention of recording another four songs, which soon became six. And three days later, they left with an album.
Fast forward to June of 2017, The Cribs surprise-released their first official new single ‘In Your Palace’. The track finds the band returning to their punk roots, with Albini taking them “closer to capturing the magic of their rough ‘n raw live show than ever” (DIY Magazine) resulting in what Clash Magazine describes as a “A feral return, laced with barely constrained energy“.
“When you record with Steve, he sets up the mics and says, ‘This is going to sound great – all you guys have to do is just nail your takes,” says Gary. “So we just played good versions of the songs and that’s why it only took five days. Not for dogmatic reasons or to try and prove some kind of point – we just had it in the can. We could have been done in four days, but we had one extra song that held things up a little bit.”
The resulting recordings, Ryan says, are “really immediate, really raw and it really represents where we are at this point, and that’s all I really want from a record. Something that’s stripped back and unsterilised. I miss that in what’s in vogue today, and I’m sure other people do.”
THE CRIBS
24-7 ROCK STAR SHIT DOWN UNDER
AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2018
Friday April 27th – Gum Ball Festival, Newcastle NSW
Saturday April 28th – The Backroom, Brisbane QLD
Tuesday May 1st – Badlands Bar, Perth WA
Thursday Mar 3rd – The Lansdowne, Sydney NSW
Friday May 4th – Crown & Anchor, Adelaide SA
Saturday May 5th – Yah Yah’s, Melbourne VIC