Algiers thrilled us with their powerful blend of gospel-infused post-punk on their 2017 LP The Underside of Power, and today, they've announced the much-anticipated follow-up, There Is No Year, out January 17, 2020 on Matador Records. Today on the Morning Show with John Richards, KEXP premiered the first single “Dispossession.”
There Is No Year was produced by Randall Dunn [Sunn O))), Earth] and Ben Greenberg [Zs, Uniform (as featured on Twin Peaks season 3)], and promises more angular guitars, relentless rhythms, and soulful vocals from frontman Franklin James Fisher. It'll be a sound they describe as "something like the synthetic son of Marvin Gaye and Fever Ray."
“Dispossession” is a politically-charged look at the world around us, featuring guest vocals from Cleveland’s afrofuturist group Mourning [A] BLKstar. “The specter of dispossession is haunting us all,” multi-instrumentalist Ryan Mahan says via a press release. He continues:
“Everywhere the imperial world represses the ghoulish histories that sustain our pasts, presents and futures. Franklin’s lyrics throughout ‘Dispossession’ and on our new record, There is No Year, like a neo-Southern Gothic novel with an anti-oppression undercurrent, testify to this modern horror, and chronicle the various ways we all — through living and longing — endure and resist its persistent attacks.”
The accompanying video, directed by Sohail Daulatzai, was filmed in the Noisy-le-Grand commune in eastern Paris, and includes images from the band’s visit to their namesake city, Algiers, during the 2019 Algerian protests, also called Revolution of Smiles or Hirak Movement.
“Amidst the urgency of now, ‘Dispossession’ sounds the warning about the permanent war against oblivion,” says Daulatzai. “The video opens with the sites of colonial massacres of Algerians, moves to the repressive spaces of the banlieues, and includes shots of the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale — a park that celebrates the glories of empire. But this is not just about the past or Paris, it is everywhere that the banner of the West is waved, where monuments to our ruin are raised — reminders of the ongoing violence, of the tensions between dream and its discontents, past and present, them and us. I wanted to give visual resonance to these tensions, to our dignified stances amidst the madness, and to our memories of a future foretold.”
Watch the video below, and check out the album track listing and North American tour dates.
Track List:
1. There Is No Year
2. Dispossession
3. Hour of the Furnaces
4. Losing is Ours
5. Unoccupied
6. Chaka
7. Wait for The Sound
8. Repeating Night
9. We Can't Be Found
10. Nothing Bloomed
2020 Tour Dates:
March 11 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brenda’s
March 12 Washington, D.C. Black Cat
March 13 Asheville, BNC Mothlight
March 14 Atlanta, GA 529
March 20 Tucson, AZ Club Congress
March 21 San Diego, CA Casbah
March 24 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
March 25 San Francisco, CA Slims
March 28 Portland, OR Polaris Hall
March 29 Seattle, WA The Crocodile
April 1 St. Paul, MN Turf Club
April 2 Milwaukee, WI Cactus Club
April 3 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle
April 4 Columbus, OH Rumba Café
April 5 Detroit, MI Deluxx Fluxx
April 6 Toronto, ON The Baby G
April 7 Montreal, QC Bar Le “Ritz” P.D.B.
April 9 Brooklyn, NY Saint Vitus
