Fotocredit: Naomi Kodde
When you start making a new record, as an artist you are faced with the choice of capturing the live experience to the best of your ability or, on the contrary, throwing yourself fully into a studio production. A musical dichotomy that, whichever turn you take, will affect the whole making process.
Paceshifters always wrote their music from a live perspective, but for their new album ‘Out-and-Outer’ they decided to take the opposite approach. A daring choice for a band that has been on the road for more than 15 years and built a fanbase precisely with their live shows. That reputation took them past places like Pinkpop, Zwarte Cross, Groezrock, SXSW and shows in the UK, Poland, Canada, Germany and Serbia.
‘Out-and-Outer’ really needed to be different. Without concessions and by completely letting go of how the band would perform live. The full focus on an album to listen to at home. Together with producer Pieter Jan Coppejans, this laid the foundations for a layered studio production that does things just a little differently. “Out-and-Outer is an album to listen to more often. There is more tension in it, but it only comes out after a few listens. We don’t give everything away at once. It’s a record where you discover something new every time,” the band says about it.
The sound on the new album has stadium rock allure, but also flirts with shoegaze and post-punk. Opening track ‘Aviator’ is an anthem in the making, without falling into sing- along kitsch. “The song is about change. Seeing your favourite spot in nature flattened to make room for a new highway, in a society where everything has to go faster. You fly over this beloved landscape and see how below you everything is changing.”
The songs on ‘Out-and-Outer’ touch on human suffering, small and large. They are universal themes that everyone, directly or indirectly, faces in life. Looking back to the past, the time that’s nipping at your heels, grief and self-destruction.
It is said that change is the only constant in life, and Paceshifters have captured that impermanence on ‘Out-and-Outer’ in a collection of heartfelt, heartfelt songs that still pop off the stage live despite production choices.
‘Out-and-Outer’ will be released on 13 September 2024 via Excelsior Recordings.