Krill: A Decade Later, Secret Language
Some bands break up and disappear. Krill broke up and got bigger.
When the Boston trio split in 2015, after two albums capped by A Distant Fist Unclenching, their scrappy, loosely mathy guitar rock kept passing from fan to fan. The cult grew while the band was gone. They reunited for shows, including opening LVL UP's farewell in 2018, and three of the four members carried on as Knot, releasing an album during the pandemic years. Now Krill are back under their own name, operating out of Chicago, and the new record arrives this Friday.
Secret Language is out November 13 via Exploding in Sound, the band's first album in over a decade. Jonah Furman (vocals, guitar, bass, piano, vibraphone) and Ian Becker (drums) are joined by guitarist Andrew Clinkman, and Seth Engel produced, engineered, and mixed the record. Nine songs, with Macie Stewart's violin, Maria Jacobson's backing vocals, and Will Greene's saxophone widening the sound.
The three singles released so far map the record's range. "Commemorative Plaque" announced the comeback in July. "Dominate," out in September with a video directed by Heavenly Tedious, starts as a thoughtful midtempo indie track and builds into something heavier, with Furman singing about growing up in the 90s and 00s in the heart of empire. In his words, it is about war, about basketball, about childhood. "Hawaii," the latest single, is the shortest and sweetest of the three, under three minutes of jangle and violin.
Listen
Start here
- "Dominate," the sharpest statement of the comeback and the best entry point for new listeners.
- "Hawaii," if you want the melodic side first.
- "Commemorative Plaque," the song that reopened the book in July.
The band hosts a Bandcamp listening party for the album on Wednesday, November 11, at 2pm EST, and they play SOME Fest in Kittery, Maine on November 21, with shows at PhilaMOCA on February 3 and TV Eye in Brooklyn on February 5. Pixanami Indie Music Blog has had this one circled since the announcement, and it is good to have Krill back.
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