For reasons both fairly obvious and privately personal, we tend to fall back to the music of White Lies just as autumn begins to unfold, the English post-punk band’s sound perfect for changing of the seasons and start of a more bleak, colder, and darker daily existence. As fate would have it, today the band has announced their forthcoming sixth album, As I Try Not To Fall Apart, set for release in February via PIAS, and with it comes the moving title track. Listen in below.
“We wrote this song quickly, late one night, and often the songs which come quickest are written from the gut and the heart, not with the head,” the band declares. “We wanted the melody to feel like a hymn, to give the confessional lyrics weight despite being wrapped up as a pop song. It’s about accepting vulnerability as a man, and knowing it’s ok to be broken. There’s never been a more pressing time to spread the message that it’s ok to not be ok.”
Cheers to that. “As I Try Not To Fall Apart”, the single, comes with a music video directed by James Arden, a.k.a. The Trash Factory; it’s available to view below as well.
“The track made me think of people trying to lift themselves out of emotional spirals — navigating feelings of fragility and fighting everyday pressures just so they can keep it together — and it made me think about how we can be buried and overwhelmed by our feelings and emotions, and how we could explore that, visually,” says Arden.
White Lies’ Harry McVeigh adds: “Being buried in sand was too mad to pass up. The sensation was really chilling and I was picking sand out of my ears for days, but I’m thrilled with the video, it really carries the message of the song and it looks beautiful.”
Dive in.
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