Roughly one month before their long-awaited debut LP Burning Neighbours comes out – on September 13 via Subroutine Records – Rotterdam’s incandescent Neighbours Burning Neighbours unveil a thorny new track titled “Always Winning”. The band have dubbed the song “an anthem for all of those who struggle with navigating the whirlwind of ADHD”. Though Neighbours are a group that excels in noisy catharsis, on “Always Winning” these spry bursts are flames meant to be doused.
Near the end of the song, vocalists Alicia Breton Ferrer and Daanie van den IJssel alternate the words ‘We’re not aligned anymore’ like a mantra, treating disarray as something that has to run its course with dignity, giving it oxygen and space to simmer down. So if you need something a little louder and abrasive than Enya to come to your senses, blasting “Always Winning” might let you be good as gold.
“The beginning of the song was born in the Epic Rainbow Unicorn Studio whilst recording the first half of Burning Neighbours,” the band states via their Instagram page, on how the song was written. “Alicia grabbed the guitar and was noodling something beautiful, Daanie heard something in their head to go along with it, in the back Aram (Scheeve) was recording the drums for “Hesitate”. A few days later Kat (Kalkman) wrote a bassline for the jam while we were recording in the Katzwijm and it all clicked.”
The aforementioned “Hesitate” debuted in 2020 via by platform Front, and will also appear as a studio version on Burning Neighbours. The song’s climax indeed shares some DNA with “Always Winning”, offering a nice glimpse into the band’s creative process: how sometimes a whole new song idea can spawn and morph out of something that was previously written.
Watch the animated visualiser of “Always Winning”, created by Kalkman, below and preorder Burning Neighbours here.
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