Beliefs’ forthcoming release Habitat was apparently finished in less than three weeks with producer Josh Korody (Dilly Dally Weaves).

There was, thus, no grand design at play in Habitat’s creation. Korody’s increasing dabblings in modular synths, avant-industrial brutalism at the helm of his Nailbiter project and electronic music in general were undoubtedly going to inform the album’s sound (“The man likes to turn a knob, that’s for sure,” laughs Crowe), while Crowe’s headspace at the time of recording found her listening to a lot of ’90s trip-hop and “picking up the bass a lot more than I ever have with Beliefs,” two factors which undoubtedly contributed to a creeping dub influence in the record’s production. Overall, in fact, both of them found themselves gravitating towards unfamiliar instruments and unfamiliar instrumentation during the sessions, as well as a jam-based process of creation less beholden to traditional verse/chorus/verse structures. And going dark. Way darker than Beliefs, never a terribly sunshine-y proposition to begin with, has gone before.

“It’s a dark record, for sure,” affirms Crowe. “I feel like we were drawing a lot more from, like, me being a Goth teenager and Josh only wanting to listen to Aphex Twin and me only wanting to listen to Portishead’s Third for the last year and stuff like that. But also it was time to embody the elements of being a ‘wall-of-sound’ band with some space and the idea of being able to be quiet when you should be quiet, and you can’t do that with three guitars. There’s no space. It just becomes all push and no pull.”

“It really feels like that type of record. When we were finished it, we were definitely, like, ‘I don’t even know if anyone’s gonna like it,’” says Crowe. “Who fucking knows? But we really liked it. It was a lot of work to let go of the idea of things being ‘polished’ or ‘finished’ and just being, like, ‘This feels like how we want it to feel so it must be done.’ Instead of labouring over it and tinkering with it and that kind of thing, we really did just allow it to be finished very, very quickly and sit where it’s at.

“We realized we don’t have to be ‘this’ kind of band. You just always hope that that lands well, right? Not that you’re making music for other people or making music specifically for your fans or for publications or whatever, but you still hope that your record where everything changes is not the record where everyone goes ‘Meh, I wish they were still doing what they were doing before.’ It’s such a gamble but you have to take it or otherwise you’re boring.”

Beliefs
Habitat
Out 9/22/2017 via Outside Music/Hand Drawn Dracula

Tracklisting:
1994
Retreat (Light the Fire)
Divided Youth (Only Lovers)
Half Empty
Comb
All Things Considered
Faulty
Anti
Catholic Guilt
Swamp
Core
Shadow of the Son

Beliefs
tour dates

Sept 14 – Montreal CA – Pop Montreal / Brasserie Beaubien
Oct 12 – Hamilton CA – The Casbah w/ Fake Palms
Oct 20 – Halifax CA – Pop Explosion / CKDU Day Party
Oct 20 – Halifax CA – Pop Explosion / The Seahorse
Nov 03 – Toronto CA – The Garrison w/ Odonis Odonis
Nov 16 – Lyon FR – Le Marche Gare w/ Algiers
Nov 22 – London UK – the Brewhouse
Nov 23 – Hull UK – The Polar Bear
Nov 25 – Brighton UK – the Haunt w/ METZ
Nov 26 – Oxford UK – The Library