| Balance and Composure, have announced the release of new album with you in spirit an arresting, atmospheric collection of melodic post-punk and towering rock due out on 4th October 2024. The album will be released on long-time collaborator and Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip’s Memory Music, and is the band’s first LP in eight years- a thrilling full-length comeback after their four-year hiatus. It thunders and stirs, dipping between beautiful, crystalline arrangements and punishing, earth-shaking climaxes; in between all, a gripping, near-physical tension crackles and growls and grooves, waiting to rip open. Click below to listen to “cross to bear” 
Vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons approaches with you in spirit with intense self-reflection, examining and uprooting the very supports on which a life is built. Preemptive grief, wrestling with faith, familial responsibility and mortality were all weighing heavily while he wrote these lyrics. Musically, this record feels like Balance and Composure’s true form––collectively, Simmons, lead guitarist Erik Petersen, guitarist Andy Slaymaker, bassist Matt Warner, and drummer Dennis Wilson are pulling from the best parts of themselves, exploring new depths while paying homage to where they’ve been, too. Yip’s contribution on production, co-writing, and even releasing the record via his own label cannot be understated, either, and it also explains why the band refers to him as an unofficial 6th member of the band. “I truly believe that this is the best collection of Balance and Composure songs there’s ever been,” he says. “It has the heavy stuff, it has the fast stuff, it has the groovy stuff. It has everything they’ve worked on over the last 12 years.” Sometimes, the record itself feels like a band grappling with its own avoidance, its own mortality, and deciding to face these things the only way they know how. Balance and Composure are with us in spirit, yes, but in the flesh, too, for now. “You’re not alone with laments,” Simmons calls in a long, airy phrase midway through the record, “and you don’t belong to the dead yet.” |
