The Cribs announce new singles series, share "Swinging at Shadows"

Having launched their own Sonic Blew label with last year’s return-to-form Night Network, The Cribs have now announced the ‘Sonic Blew Singles Club,’ a series of four 7″s that will be released this year.

“Basically, after 3 years away from the road we just ended up with SO many songs built up in the vaults that we wanted to try doing something different and interesting with them,” says the band’s Gary Jarman. We had a bunch of extra tracks from the Night Network sessions which we finished and mixed over lockdown…and then the extra downtime led to us coming up with several new songs also. Of course we could have just put them all to one side and held them back for a new album or whatever, but that doesn’t seem like much fun.”

Gary continues, “Back in the day, we were always a band that were known for our B-sides – a concept that is pretty much irrelevant nowadays…we know that the fans miss this, so setting up the Sonic Blew Singles Club seemed like the ideal solution – we get to clear the vaults, and people get a guaranteed new single plus B-side every month.”

The first of those is out now digitally and will be on vinyl on September 24, featuring two new songs, “Swinging At Shadows” and “Taken To Tualatin” which features backing vocals from Janet Weiss. Both are very catchy full of “whoa-oh!s” and other Cribs trademarks. Listen to “Swinging At Shadows”, and read more from Gary on them, below.

You can subscribe to the Sonic Blew Singles Club here.

Swinging At Shadows was recorded in LA during the Night Network sessions, and was earmarked as an early single from that album – but in the end we decided to hold it back. It seemed like an obvious choice for the first single from the Singles Club as it’s a big summery pop song – super fun and upbeat, with some throwback ‘woah-oh’s’ in the chorus…

Taken To Tualatin was written during the dark days of the first lockdown, whilst the Oregon wildfires were raging and blocking out the sun. It’s one of the most personal songs I have ever written. Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney/Quasi) joined me on backing vocals – it’s an honour to have her involved – not only is Janet one of my closest friends, she also has one of my favourite singing voices in the world, and writes amazing harmonies.