My New Band Believe - My New Band Believe: Album Review

Artwork for the my new band believe self-titled album

4. 5 stars hq

One of the main departures My New Band Believe allows – never on the table with Black Midi – is being able to pick through relationships.

Things come in and out of fashion over time, but revenge never loses its appeal.

As if proof, My New Band Believe starts with Target Practice, a two-minute hate letter to a guilty as charged third party who is repeatedly assured, ‘Don’t cry, you deserve this’, strings frizzling, a finger jabbing meter giving the whole thing a slightly cartoonish air.

On screen we admit it sounds like an in joke at best; in sounds it’s inexplicably, brutally, darkly, wonderful.

Context. Ah yes, you’ll need some context. My New Band Believe is somewhere between non-conventional solo project and loose collective; one led by – or for, or both – Cameron Picton.

The idea coalesced in the long vacuum created by the demise of Black Midi, whose avant garde take on post rock, along with improv this and that won and lost people in equal measure.

When the group split in 2023 he found himself unmoved by the notion of band life or conventional ways of approaching the singer-songwriter conundrum.

The name arrived in a fever dream whilst suffering from food poisoning on tour in China, one of several hallucinogenic outpourings that also became fragmental future lyrics.

Based inside the idea that pop is only as constrained as the perception of the artist who aspires to make it, in this world there is less solid ground to hold on to.

One minute for example the listener is gently cocooned by Love Story, a tender piano ballad that sketches domestic bliss (‘I’m in the back of your mind/always beside you’) before midway through a portentous clarinet gives way to a sudden loss, leaving the listener to wonder if the subject was always alone and simply talking to themselves.

It’s far from the only moment of ambiguity: Opposite Teacher ruminates on the pitfalls of navigating adulthood without ending up a facsimile of your role models (‘Will I follow In Your Footsteps/Inherit Your Regrets?’), suitably unsure of musically whether it wants to be in store folk or capricious theatre.

One of the main departures My New Band Believe allows – one which was never on the table with Black Midi – is being able to pick through relationships.

In The Blink Of An Eye tumbles, a rustic jamboree that sounds breathless and romantic even in the stop-start mayhem of strings and nimble-fingered percussion, even if it’s all for nothing (‘I wish you would kiss me/Before it’s all too late/But if you’re gonna kick me, babe/At least let me pick the place’).

Closer One Night is less frenzied, but with words whispered more than sung, the quiet exhortations are to taking or being taken, the words spoken into the darkness as the guilty bedside warmth next door quickly turns cold again.

Intentional or not, the centrepieces here though are the songs which are allowed to stretch out the most.

Almost a suite, Actress confronts the self-destructive tendencies of a friend, the ebb and flow eventually reaching a climax as of a dazzling off-Broadway solo, the final moments like the swish of a falling curtain.

If that’s ambitious, Heart Of Darkness – which channels the ghosts of Bert Jansch and Otis Redding, amongst others – feathers into unlikely but compelling knots essences of jazz, folk and soul, a grand aural design that serves notice of a songwriter with almost limitless potential.

Revenge never goes out of style but with My New Band Believe, Cameron Picton will have to embrace many new friends as well as the enemies he’ll need to keep closer.

Dazzling and endlessly inventive, you will not want to duck for cover.

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