Rock Regeneration

Including a date at the Engine Rooms in Southampton

CLEAVE (auto-antonym)
i. To prise apart
ii. To bring together

After the September release of their fifteenth studio album “Cleave”, Therapy are about to hit the road again with their 14 date “Going Somewhere” tour.

Andy Cairns tells a great story about Therapy?’s spring UK tour with The Stranglers. As the trio walked onstage in Kilmarnock, Scotland, their frontman noticed a solitary punter, three rows from the front, vigorously booing his band before a single amplified guitar chord had been struck. Each successive song in the set received the same vociferous, relentlessly hostile response. Two nights later, at Nottingham Rock City, the antagonist was back once more, front and centre, still booing, though with markedly less enmity than before. In Manchester, on the final night of the campaign, Cairns stepped from his tour bus to be confronted again by the by-now-familiar face of his new nemesis.

This time, however, the guy was clutching a pen and a copy of Therapy?’s classic 1994 album Troublegum. “Could you sign this for me please?” he asked politely. “I think we’d battered him into submission,” Cairns says with a laugh. It’s an instructive anecdote, both a testament to Therapy?’s enduring capacity to win over hearts and minds with their singular, sui generis sound, and a reminder, in a broader sense, that even in the face of alienation, disaffection and discord, there remains hope for consensus, harmony and solidarity.

Which brings us, neatly, to Therapy?’s fifteenth studio album, Cleave. Roughly themed around notions of duality and division, the bandís follow-up to 2015’s acclaimed Disquiet – and their first recording for new label Marshall Records – is a sharply focused, fiercely intelligent, impassioned and empowering set of songs from a band operating at a creative and artistic peak. A scathing, incisive state-of-the-nation address, investigating the schisms in contemporary society and the motivations of those seeking to propagate disjuncture, it’s a powerful, challenging, uncompromising collection from a band never afraid to confront and dissect humanityís darkest impulses.

From the thrillingly propulsive assault of Wreck It Like Beckett via the addictive Callow (the album’s first single, out now) and the unsettling I Stand Alone to the disquieting, bleakly beautiful No Sunshine, the ten tracks which make up Cleave coalesce to paint a portrait of a fractured, dislocated world rent by unprincipled, mendacious masters.

“We’re living in a time riven by conflict,” Andy Cairns states baldly. “You look at what’s happening in the United States at present, what’s going on with Brexit in the UK, with North and South Korea, with Palestine and Israel, and itís impossible not to see turmoil and turbulence. Some of these conflicts have been going on as long as I can remember, but they seemed to really reach a head again around the time we were writing the album. Cleave is our response to the divisions we see all around us.”

“The way I’ve described Cleave to people whoíve been asking is that it’s kinda like Nurse and Pleasure Death-era Therapy? meets Troublegum, but with a totally modern 21st century production,” says Cairns of the 10 song collection committed to tape by producer Chris Sheldon at Blast studios in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in January this year. “I think we’ve become a lot more comfortable about doing what we do best.”

Therapy? “Going Somewhere” tour dates.

8-Nov Cardiff The Globe
9-Nov Southampton Engine Rooms
10-Nov Norwich Waterfront
11-Nov Nottingham Rescue Rooms
13-Nov Sheffield o2 Academy 2
14-Nov Glasgow Garage
15-Nov Stoke Sugarmill
16-Nov Manchester Gorilla
17-Nov Leeds Brudenell
19-Nov Brighton Concorde 2
20-Nov Bristol SWX
21-Nov Exeter Phoenix
22-Nov London O2 Islington Academy
23-Nov Birmingham Asylum

Therapy? are
Andrew James Cairns – Vocals/Guitar
Michael McKeegan – Bass
Neil Cooper – Drums

Videos

Links
http://www.therapyquestionmark.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/Therapyofficial