My New Band Believe – Numerology
Cameron Picton, former bassist and sometime frontman of black midi, has a new band and it has one of the best band names going: My New Band Believe. With “Numerology”, a standalone non-album single, he announces the group’s self-titled debut album, due April 10th on Rough Trade. The single is produced by Seth Evans, who also plays keyboards in the band, and it won’t appear on the standard LP. Instead, it comes bundled as a bonus 10″ with the special edition vinyl, and shows up in no fewer than seven versions on the deluxe CD.
“Numerology” earns its format treatment. It opens on furiously strummed acoustic guitar — somewhere between flamenco and runaway freight train — then piles on brass, free jazz horn and calypso percussion until it sounds like a club track that’s refused to accept the limitations of acoustic instruments. Picton leans into chance and risk as lyrical territory, weighing the thrill of a single night against the potential for everything to go sideways. It does everything but fall apart.
The band that plays on the album is worth noting: Kiran Leonard, Caius Williams, Steve Noble, and Andrew Cheetham round out the core lineup, with co-production from Mike O’Malley and Jasper Llewellyn of caroline — the same team Picton worked with on “caroline 2” last year. The record itself is almost entirely acoustic, with minimal reverb and essentially no electronic processing. The origin story is suitably strange: Picton reportedly conceived the project while feverish in a Chinese hotel room, and salvaged fragments of imagery and scrambled text from that experience into songs. One phrase stuck: “My New Band Believe.” The name became the project, which became the album.
For a band only two singles deep, they’ve already got a full headline tour lined up across the UK and North America.
Tracklist:
- Target Practice
- In the Blink of an Eye
- Heart of Darkness
- Love Story
- Pearls
- Opposite Teacher
- Actress
- One Night
Tour Dates:
Europe:
- April 11 — The Hague, Netherlands — Rewire Festival
UK:
- April 28 — Glasgow — Flying Duck
- April 29 — Leeds — Brudenell
- April 30 — Manchester — White Hotel
- May 2 — London — EartH
- May 3 — Bristol — Rough Trade
- May 4 — Cambridge — Unitarian Church
- May 6 — Oxford — Common Ground
North America:
- May 29 — Philadelphia, PA — PhilaMOCA
- May 30 — New York, NY — Mercury Lounge
- June 1 — Kingston, NY — Tubby’s
- June 2 — Amherst, MA — The Drake
- June 3 — Montréal, QC — La Sotterenea
- June 5 — Toronto, ON — The Monarch
- June 6 — Detroit, MI — Lager House
- June 7 — Chicago, IL — Constellation
