Chamberlain

Watch Chamberlain's video for "Not Your War" off first album in two decades

Earlier this year, post-hardcore/alt-country/indie rock veterans Chamberlain (fka Split Lip) launched a Kickstarter to help fund their first album in about 20 years, and now the album is officially announced. It’s called Red Weather and due November 20 via Arctic Rodeo Recordings (pre-order). It was produced by My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel, who vocalist David Moore says “was the only man for the job. There was no way with Carl at the helm that it wasn’t going to work unless we just wrote duds of songs. There was no way it wasn’t going to be something worthwhile.”

“The trust with Carl comes from him knowing who were are, and all of our individual personalities,” adds guitarist Adam Rubenstein. “He knows what the band was, what the band evolved to and what the band aspires to evolve to. That takes really knowing us, which can’t be fabricated.”

The album will feature the single “Some Other Sky” that Chamberlain released last year, as well as second single “Not Your War” which premieres in this post, along with a video shot by bassist Curtis Mead and edited by Adam Rubenstein. “Not Your War” began as an acoustic song that David wrote and felt “was clearly not a Chamberlain song,” but meanwhile Adam had written a separate instrumental demo, and they combined David’s lyrics and Adam’s instrumental to create what is now “Not Your War.”

“The song is about the old wounds we all carry forward in our lives,” David tells us. “It’s about sense memory, embedded trauma, and hairpin emotional triggers. Traps set by past lovers that someone new unknowingly falls into. When I left a long relationship, a marriage, and began anew, I kept shadow boxing according to old patterns. The fear I carried was perceived—based on experiences from the past—rather than being any true threat. Sometimes people come into our lives wanting to love us and sadly they’re met with all kinds of defense mechanisms…like tip-toeing through a minefield planted by someone else in a different time.”

Speaking about the video, Curtis adds, “This video sums up this entire experience in both the way it came to be what it has become. It wasn’t long ago that five old friends with families and lives of their own, started something small that has grown into something much bigger than any of us could have expected. What started as a typical day with my six year old son filming the world we’ve created for ourselves and reveling in it seemed to make for some oddly fitting visuals to this new song I just happened to be humming in my head. After all, this song, like this album, is both about what was, and perhaps more importantly, what will be. This may not be your war boy, but this can be your anthem.”

Musically, “Not Your War” is an offering of soaring, yearning heartland rock, and it finds Chamberlain in very fine form — you’d never guess they’d been gone for two decades. Check it out here:

Tracklist
Not Your War
Calling All Cars
Red Weather
One Soul
Some Other Sky
Every Trick In The Book
Reign of the Two Kings
Lion In The Well
Take What You Can Get
Lights Go Low

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