Archers of Loaf have announced their first studio album in 24 years. Reason in Decline arrives October 21 via Merge. Eric Bachmann, Eric Johnson, Matt Gentling, and Mark Price have also announced a tour behind the new album, which marks the first new full-length from the band since 1998’s White Trash Heroes. Watch the video for the first single “In the Surface Noise” below.
While Reasons in Decline is the group’s first LP in over two decades, the band has reunited on a number of occasions since 1998. In 2011, they embarked on a North American reunion tour, during which they performed on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
In a statement, Bachmann explained that the desire to write new material for the band came after revisiting his older songs. “For Archers lyrics, songs, everything, I had to imagine I was this angry white curmudgeon college guy who hates capitalism and consumerism and has a broken heart,” he said. “He’s bitter about relationships, so he makes fun of things to seem cool. As I’ve aged, I’m far less like that anymore, but it is a part of my personality. I just wasn’t excited about re-energizing it. I used that guy as a starting point to get myself out of the gate, but in the course of writing the actual songs, he eventually went away.”
Bachman said the new album was written when the early COVID-19 lockdown took away his ability to tour for the first time in nearly four decades. “It was a massive psychological setback, to the point that I had to get help,” he stated. “I already had a problem with suicide ideation, constantly thinking about this shit. And I’m not ashamed to say that. Thousands and thousands of people have the same problem. Anyway, all this got baked into the songs.”
He continued: “What I really think about going back to the Archers and doing a new record is that the three other members of this band are awesome. It’s not about responding to the past or whatever our bullshit legacy is. I just wanted to work with these guys because I knew the chemistry we had and that we still have. I knew that was rare.”
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