Terrible Sons Release New Album ‘The Raft Is Not The Shore’ Via Nettwerk
April 28, 2023 BY Jason Currell
Today, New Zealand group Terrible Sons, feat. husband-and-wife Lauren and Matt Barus, release their debut album The Raft Is Not The Shore via Nettwerk. To celebrate the release, the band will play an intimate album release show at Loons, Lyttelton on May 13th. Tickets can be purchased via Undertheradar.co.nz. Stream and purchase The Raft Is Not The Shore HERE.
Coinciding with the album release is a video for the opening track from the album “Birdsong.” The stunning visuals for ‘Birdsong’ were directed by Charlotte Evans (Aldous Harding, Nadia Reid, Benee) and shot on 16mm film by cinematographer Ezra Simons (Earth Tongue). Matt adds about the background of the video, “Birdsong is a tale of a journey. It dips into Koukourarata, Port Levy, which is over the hill from where we spend a lot of time in Banks Peninsula. [Director] Charlotte Evans sent us this beautiful concept based around these images of stark figures in a harsh, windswept landscape with billowing, Victorian costumes.The day we shot the video was an exceptionally hot summer’s day and I was stomping over these grassy hills. Ezra captured these beautiful, contrasted and vast landscapes with me as a solitary figure burdened with something unspoken and elusive.” Watch the music video HERE.
Deeply rooted in their local community in Ōtautahi/ Christchurch, Terrible Sons have quietly and consistently been releasing music online for seven years, with early singles clocking up over 18 million streams. Their debut album, The Raft Is Not the Shore, was recorded over a couple of years in their backyard home studio, with producer Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams) and long term friends and collaborators, including Tom Healy on guitar, Jo Barus (Dave Dobbyn) on bass, Joe McCallum (The Veils) on drums and Cameron Pearce on horns, with strings by London’s Urban Soul Orchestra and an impromptu choir from their children’s local primary school.
The Raft Is Not The Shore tracklisting:
- Birdsong
- Sunset Swimming
- Easy Love
- Asperatus
- You Can Choose
- Yelling In The Wilderness
- Alright, Alright
- Hold Your Light High
- Tomorrow Always Comes
- Watching and Watching
- Young Blossom
Terrible Sons is the moniker for husband/wife duo Matthew Barus (The Dukes) and Lauren Barus (L.A. Mitchell, Fly My Pretties), who work and live with their two children in an intentional community near Christchurch. Having clocked up over 18 million streams on previous singles since 2018, the quietly accomplished band is signed to Nettwerk Music Group. Their string of sparse, yet intimate modern folk EP releases include their most recent and much-lauded third EP Mass.
