SOM will release their anticipated new full-length, The Shape Of Everything, via Pelagic Records January 21st, 2022, today unveiling the record’s cover art, track listing, and a video for first single, “Animals.”
Following their Awake EP released this past Spring and their shimmering cover of Billie Eilish’s “Everything I Wanted,” latest track “Animals” finds SOM refining a sound that has been called “doom pop” by Metal Injection, with ethereal heartfelt vocals atop huge riffs alternating between gritty and atmospheric. The accompanying video was directed by Toshadeva Palani (Alcest, Junius, Angel Olsen).
Following the acclaim accrued by 2018 debut The Fall, SOM — comprised of current and former members of Constants, Junius, and recent Grammy nominees Caspian — had planned to enter the studio in 2020 to record the follow-up. However, pandemic-induced lockdown forced them to improvise and record entirely remotely, producing 2021’s luscious Awake EP. This new workflow redefined SOM’s process, which carried into the completion of their forthcoming LP. Its concise compositions balance gritty riffs with airy vocal lines that will appeal to fans of Deftones and Tame Impala alike and are just as primed for rock radio as for shoegaze-loving connoisseurs.
“About halfway through the writing cycle for our new record, I woke up to an email from our guitar player Joel with an mp3 attached called ‘Animals,’” says vocalist and guitarist Will Benoit. “He sent it at like 3:00 or 4:00 am, so I knew he was excited to share something that he had obviously stayed up late working on. He was living in Richmond at the time, and this was during last year’s George Floyd protests, so he was front row watching monuments getting torn down and experiencing a real cultural shift. Later on, he said it was both horrible and inspiring.
“I was pretty blown away by the demo. From the first note of that lonely, haunting guitar intro all the way through the heightened tension of the instrumental outro — that was all in his original version, and it felt like lightning in a bottle that I had to dig in on immediately. I remember I was running errands all morning, and in the car, I was bouncing back and forth between listening to the demo and recording voice memos of all the vocal melodies on my phone. By 11:00am I had the chorus lyrics and harmonies worked out and by 2:00pm I was back in the studio and had all the vocals recorded pretty close to how they are on the album.”
It’s this creative efficiency and sense of intuition in songwriting that gives SOM’s The Shape Of Everything its compelling power. The intentional, self-imposed paradigm of minimalism, the aim to reduce each musical idea to its emotive essence is what makes the band sound huge — and of course the flawless, modern yet incredibly warm and rich production by Will Benoit himself.