MAYBESHEWILL SHARE NEW SINGLE ‘GREEN UNPLEASANT LAND’

12th November 2021 0 By Jon Deaux

With their first new album since 2014, ’No Feeling is Final’ set for release next week, Maybeshewill have shared new single, ‘Green Unpleasant Land’, inspired by the 2020 book of the same name by Professor Corinne Fowler, which questions many commonly-held beliefs regarding England’s “idyllic” countryside. The band comment,

“Fowler’s writing sheds light on the damaging legacy of the country’s colonial past and challenges the (often unspoken) notion that green spaces in the West have and should be the preserve of white people. The track seeks to draw attention to this insidious strain of racism that is deep-rooted within our society.

Green Unpleasant Land is something of a stylistic departure for the band, making musical reference to folk and traditional music from the British Isles. Its foreboding air of unease and unsettling finale are heavily indebted to the cinematic genre of ‘folk-horror’, as typified by films like Blood on Satan’s Claw, The Wicker Man and Midsommar, all of which convey a morbid fascination with the darkness of the rural landscape.”

Since 2006 Maybeshewill have released four full-length albums of towering, cinematic instrumental music. After a decade long career that saw them tour across four continents they bowed out in 2016 with a sold out show at London’s Koko. Having reformed briefly in 2018 at the request of The Cure’s Robert Smith for a show at Meltdown Festival, 2021 sees the band return with their first new material since 2014’s Fair Youth. Having worked on ideas separately in the intervening years, it was the sketches of music that would become ‘No Feeling is Final’ that pulled the band back together. Building on the songs that they felt needed to be heard, together.

‘No Feeling is Final’ was born from a place of weary exasperation. From the knowledge that we’re living in a world hurtling towards self-destruction. We watch as forests burn and seas rise. As the worst tendencies of humanity are championed by those in power; rage, fear, greed and apathy. We see every injustice, every conflict, every catastrophe flash up on our screens. We stay complacent and consume to forget our complicity in the structures and systems that sustain that behaviour. As the world teeters on the edge of disaster, we sigh and keep scrolling, the uneasy feeling in our stomachs eating away at us a little more each day.

However easy it would be to switch off and pretend all is lost, there’s no choice but to remain engaged. To set that feeling of hopelessness aside and use the fear and frustration as fuel to make something positive.

‘No Feeling is Final’ is a message of hope and solidarity. It’s a story of growing grassroots movements across the world that are rejecting the doomed futures being sold to us, and imagining new realities based on equality and sustainability. It’s a reckoning with the demons in our histories and a promise to right the wrongs of the past. It’s a plea to take action in shaping the world we leave for future generations. It’s a simple gesture of reassurance to anyone else struggling in these troubled times: “Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

Continuing and building on the self-sufficient, do-it-yourself ethos that has been core to their existence, ‘No Feeling is Final’ was once again recorded and produced by bassist Jamie Ward, and will be released on the bands own Robot Needs Home Collective Label, in collaboration with close friends Wax Bodega (North America), New Noise (Asia) and Birds Robe (Australasia) on 19th November.

Pre-order the new album: https://lnk.to/maybeshewill