In what can only be described as THE most highly anticipated album of our generation, The Avalanches have finally broken the silence on their decade-long absence since releasing their critically and commercially successful debut, 2000’s Since I Left You and rewarded fans’ patience with a brand new tune.
As if you needed any proof of the group’s cultural currency, Since I Left You not only polled in year-end lists from tastemakers such as Pitchfork and Slant Magazine, but remains a beloved record to Australian audiences; charting in the top ten of both the industry ranked publication, The 100 Best Australian Albums and Triple J’s Hottest 100 Australian Albums Of All Time.
Now the group have unceremoniously dropped their first new music in what feels like forever with a surreptitious tweet from Saturday reading:
https://twitter.com/TheAvalanches/status/236885092293828608
Following up with today’s tweet linking to the new ‘trax’:
https://twitter.com/TheAvalanches/status/237540157157421056
The link leads to a sign-up page over at The Avalanches’ official website, and for the price of an email you get access to ‘A Cowboy Overflow Of The Heart’, what can best be described as a demo featuring a spoken word poem; with the audio data interestingly tagged as “(Avs + DCB demo #1)”.
Featuring a soothing American voice speaking lucid lines like, “the dog eats out of an old tambourine on the floor” over a quiet, but defnitely Avalanches sounding musical backing of cheering children, light banjo and twinkling xylophone under a haze of light crackling static; with the obscure loops and samples that so captured the zeitgeist to begin with.
Is this the first taste of a real, proper Avalanches album? Or another enigmatic mislead in what has become one of Australian music’s most long-awaited follow-ups?
While the fabled rumour of a sophomore release creeps up annually; we have it on good authority that the band have been booked in for mixing sessions here in Melbourne.
With the new demo now appearing in tow, it bodes well for some more material to surface soon. Fingers crossed the ridiculously anticipated album will be due before year’s end.
Take a listen to the first new Avalanches material in over a decade below:
