On May 8th, British alternative rock mainstays Basement will return with ‘Wired’ marking their first new album in eight years as well as a reunion with their original label Run For Cover Records. Across the LP’s 12 tracks fans will hear a return to the unbridled passion and creative intuition that’s always animated their best material.
Today, the band — vocalist Andrew Fisher, guitarists Alex Henery and Ronan Crix, bassist Duncan Stewart, and drummer James Fisher — tease ‘Wired’ with the release of lead singles ‘Wired’ and ‘Broken By Design’ which together showcase the album’s dynamic breadth. The title-track is the most urgent they’ve ever sounded, a surefire live staple propelled by needling guitars, a slugging drumbeat, and a skyscraping hook that finds Fisher’s voice in peak form. ‘Broken By Design’ has the opposite temperament: dusky, delicate, bass-led, but still quintessentially Basement in its immediate catchiness and moody character.
Speaking of the singles the band’s Andrew Fisher says, “‘Wired’ is about how sometimes it feels that we are set up to feel and behave in certain ways beyond our control. That no matter how hard you try to hide it, eventually it will come out – either by choice or by force. This song was almost lost – a few of us were into it, but it sort of lost traction for a bit. Then one day it cropped back up and we put it at the forefront of our minds and it ended up being one of my favourite songs to perform and record.”
He continues, “‘Broken By Design’ is about giving something your absolute best and realizing it’s destined to fail. Getting to the other side of the situation, looking back and deciding to do everything differently and feeling grateful for the opportunity to grow. We’ve all done a lot of work on getting better at talking to each other as friends and as band mates. Sometimes that’s an easy distinction – or rather, not a distinction at all. Other times, the lines are blurred and we lose track of who we are and why we do this. When I’m singing, ‘let’s go back to the start’ I mean to when we did this purely for fun. For an excuse to see each other, to travel, to be creative, to express ourselves through music. We all feel so lucky to be in a position to still get to do this and this album and this song in particular, is us trying to go back to how it should be.”
Listen to ‘Wired’ and ‘Broken By Design’ and watch the videos below, with the former directed by Ashley Rommelrath and the latter by Tas Wilson.
This summer Basement will embark on a European tour followed by an appearance at London’s All Points East Festival in August. All shows are listed below.
Basement were adamant that ‘Wired’ had to be their most decisive artistic statement yet. A bold musical swing that people will either love or hate, but that absolutely can’t elicit a muted reaction from their fans. The group spent years writing and refining the 12 no-bloat songs, working closer and communicating better than ever while building out the tracklist as a group in various studios long before they began recording. Therefore, the songs were fully-formed by the time they hit the studio with powerhouse producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Mannequin Pussy), who helped the band manifest the heightened version of Basement that they’d always dreamt of. Imperfections were celebrated, each member’s ideas were incorporated, and Congleton ensured that every moment on Wired sounds both precise and enervated.
“I never thought Basement could sound like this,” says guitarist Alex Henery. “But in my head, it’s what I’ve always wanted Basement to sound like.”
Every time Basement take a break, their band gets bigger. The quintet’s 2011 debut, ‘I Wish You Could Stay Here’, gave them a foothold in the post-hardcore groundswell of the early 2010s, but Basement had already decided to call it quits before their far more evolved follow-up, ‘Colourmeinkindness’, had even hit the shelves. Upon disbanding in late 2012 so vocalist Fisher could get his teaching degree, Basement’s underground following ballooned in their absence, and when they eventually reformed in 2014, they were welcomed back as mainstays of the scene.
Basement charged forward with two more LPs, 2016’s snappier ‘Promise Everything’ and 2018’s sleeker ‘Beside Myself’, but after the latter record, which was released on a major label, Basement knew they needed to take a year off to recalibrate. “We were all left with a really weird, sour taste in our mouth after signing to a major label and having all these people control things,” Fisher admits. During their COVID-era hiatus, each member questioned whether the band should even continue as they spent time pursuing their own creative outlets. It was a period of serious existential reflection for the guys in Basement, and at one point, Henery considered stepping away from the band altogether before Fisher intervened, knowing that everyone in Basement needed the band to persevere. ”Alex saying that he was ready to cut the cord was what I needed to be like ‘Nope, we cannot do that,’” Fisher says.
After some deep conversations that reaffirmed their creative alliance, Henery and Fisher reconvened to begin writing again with no label pressures and no strings attached. Instantly, the seeds of ‘Wired’ began to take shape, and soon enough, the whole band knew they had something special in the works. Coincidentally, not long after Basement began properly sculpting LP5, the ‘Colourmeinkindness’ song ‘Covet’ caught wind on TikTok and swiftly became a viral hit, earning a Gold certification in 2024 — 12 years after its release — and introducing Basement’s music to a whole new generation of internet-savvy fans.
Once again, Basement find themselves re-emerging with new music bigger and more beloved than ever before.
‘Wired’ tracklist:
01. Time Waster
02. Wired
03. Deadweight
04. Broken By Design
05. Pick Up The Pieces
06. Embrace
07. Sever
08. The Way I Feel
09. Satisfy
10. Head Alight
11. Longshot
12. Summer’s End
Upcoming tour dates:
June 6th – Rock Am Ring – Nürburg, RP, Germany
June 6th – Rock im Park – Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany
June 8th – Loppen – Copenhagen, DK (with Glare)
June 9th – Kollektivet Livet – Stockholm, Sweden (with Glare)
June 14th – TAMA – Poznań, Poland (with Glare)
June 15th – Schlachthof – Wiesbaden, HE, Germany (with Glare)
June 17th – zakk – Düsseldorf, Germany (with Glare)
June 19th – Hurricane Festival – Scheeßel, NDS, Germany
June 20th – Southside Festival – Neuhausen ob Eck, BW, Germany
June 21st – Farewell Youth Fest 2 – Dresden, Germany
June 23rd – Magazzini Generali – Milan, Lombardy, Italy (with Fiddlehead)
June 24th – Dynamo Zürich (Dynamo) – Zürich, ZH, Switzerland (with Fiddlehead)
June 25th – Jera on Air – Ysselsteyn, Limburg, Netherlands
June 26th – Mia Mao – Paris, France (with Fiddlehead)
June 28th – Bowlers Exhibition Centre – Manchester, UK (Outbreak Festival headline)
August 23rd – Victoria Park – London, UK (All Points East)
August 27th–August 29 – Canela Party – Torremolinos, Spain