Ceremony shares new video and new tour dates

Ceremony share their new video for "Your Life In France," from their forthcoming album 'The L-Shaped Man,'

After revealing their The L-Shaped Man album and sharing a double video for album tracks “The Separation” and “The Understanding,” Ceremony are back with a new video for another track from the new LP. “Your Life In France.”

The video’s release comes along with the band announcing a full US tour, which kicks off in California in mid-May (following their record release shows in the Bay Area and LA in May) and sees them trek the entire country before wrapping in Portland in mid July.

Breakup albums mark a turning point for a band: the moment when their sound completely changes and reaches a new level of emotional clarity. All that heartbreak and malaise condensed into any single record often makes for a defining piece of work, no matter the genre. The best records explore the nooks and crannies of sadness, learning it inside and out – celebrating it.

Ceremony’s fifth studio album, The L-Shaped Man, uses singer Ross Farrar’s recent breakup as a platform to explore loneliness and emotional weariness, but it is by no means a purely sad album. Rather than look inward, Farrar uses his experience to write about what it means to go through something heavy and come out the other side a different person.

In order to tell Farrar’s story, Ceremony have almost completely stripped back the propulsive hardcore of their previous records, turning every angry outburst into simmering despair. “We’ve always tried to be minimalists in writing, even if it’s loud or fast or abrasive,” says lead guitarist Anthony Anzaldo. “It’s really intense when I hear it. Not in a way where you turn everything up to ten. Things are so bare, you’re holding this one note for so long and you don’t now where it’s going-to me, that’s intensity.” That intensity is apparent on “Exit Fears,” the first full song on the record. It meticulously pairs Justin Davis’ loping bassline, which pulls the track along, with Anzaldo’s icy, minimal guitar work. It brings to mind some alternate version of Joy Division that hasn’t quite lost all hope. It gets close to exploding, but instead plays the shadows, never quite rising above a nervous simmer.

“A lot of the content has to do with loss, and specifically the loss of someone who you care deeply about,” Farrar says. “There is no way for you to go through something like this artistically and not have really strong emotions of loss and pain. There’s not really any way to hide that.” Farrar, for his part, is singing with a new kind of intensity, his baritone swooping and retreating from stressed angst to unsettling near-mutter as he sings, “You told your friends you were fine/ you thought you were fine too…” and later, “nothing is ever fine/ nothing ever feels right/ you have to tell yourself you tried.”

The sound is abetted by producer John Reis, who honed his sound in seminal bands like Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, and Hot Snakes. Much of the gravelly aggression he experimented with in those bands is present on The L-Shaped Man.

There’s a story behind the title too. “I was speaking to our driver Stephen while on tour,” Farrar says. “We were talking about men in general and what shape they are…their body type. I said, ‘I guess men are in the shape of an L. The torso is straight. Vertical. And then you have the little feet at the end.’ There’s this painter named Leslie Lerner who was living in San Francisco in the ’70s and ’80s and made these beautiful paintings. He died on my 21st birthday. A lot of the record is about the similarities in our ideas. In what we’re trying to make. Things that have to do with love and losing love.”

Ceremony

The L-Shaped Man

(Matador Records)

May 19, 2015

1. Hibernation

2. Exit Fears

3. Bleeder

4. Your Life In France

5. Your Life In America

6. The Separation

7. The Pattern

8. Root Of The World

9. The Party

10. The Bridge

11. The Understanding

Tour Dates

5/22 Berkeley, CA @ 924 Gilman Street º
5/23 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echoplex º
6/12 Visalia, CA @ Cellar Door *ˇ
6/13 San Diego, CA @ Strong Hold *!
6/14 Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge *!
6/15 Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress *!
6/16 El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls *!
6/17 Austin, TX @ Red 7 *!$
6/18 Dallas, TX @ Sons Of Hermann Hall *!$
6/19 Houston, TX @ Walters Downtown *!
6/20 New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks *
6/21 Gainesville, FL @ The Atlantic Nightspot *
6/22 Tampa, FL @ Epic Problem *
6/23 Orlando, FL @ The Social *
6/24 Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn *
6/25 Raleigh, NC @ Kings *
6/26 Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel +*
6/27 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer +*
6/28 Somerville, MA @ Cuisine en Locale +*
7/1 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom +*!
7/5 Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place +*
7/6 Cleveland, OH @ Now That’s Class +*
7/7 Detroit, MI @ Marble +*
7/8 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall +*
7/9 Madison, WI @ The Frequency +*
7/10 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry +*
7/11 Omaha, NE @ Sweatshop Gallery *ˇ
7/12 Denver, CO @ Moon Room *ˇ
7/13 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court *ˇ
7/14 Boise, ID @ The Shredder *ˇ
7/15 Seattle, WA @ Neumo’s *ˇ
7/16 Portland, OR @ Analog Cafe *ˇ