Accepting yourself is one of the most daunting, challenging and altering things you can do in this life. To see every asset of your being, the good and the bad, the wins and the failures, the lessons and the mistakes, all in the same light, and use the clarity uncovered to push you forward into ever greater things, it takes a lot of work. But when it all slots into place, you wonder why you didn’t take the steps sooner.
James Veck-Gilodi has been confronting this for most of Deaf Havana‘s career. And it is only now, within the creation of their stunning seventh album, ‘We’re Never Getting Out‘ (out October 3rd via So Recordings/Civilians), that it has all started to make sense. The realisation that he has spent years swaying between extremes of existence, never genuinely finding contentment or happiness at either end. Forever feeling like every step of the band’s journey to now – through Top 10 albums, sold-out tours, total breakdowns, and endless rebirths – has been to please someone else rather than himself. A constant battle of expectation, both inside his chest and on the turntable, that was always going to boil over at some point.
New single, “Car Crash“, James says, “is really a pretty sad song for me… surprise, surprise. I wrote it whilst I was still in my previous relationship, but I knew it was coming to an end and I was full of very conflicting feelings and emotions. I didn’t really know how to navigate them without causing harm. It’s about that feeling when you know the magic has gone or maybe admit to yourself that it was never really there in the first place. I hope this song connects with people who are in the same situation and maybe helps them to know that there is a way through it and sometimes it really does work out for the best, however hard it may be.”
Until the Summer of 2023, James felt like he was sleepwalking into another edition of this cycle. But over the next twelve months, he would make two decisions that would ignite something different inside of him and would lead him towards ‘We’re Never Getting Out’. The first was taking the initiative to scrap a body of work that he and guitarist and brother Matt Veck-Gilodi had been working on, one that was much in the same vein as 2022’s ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land‘ but he felt no emotional resonance with.
The second was in the Summer of 2024 when he finally called time on a marriage which he had felt unhappiness in for longer than he would like to admit, yet had been scared to step out of because the potential uncertainty and loneliness of life on the other side was so great. In choosing to no longer just coast, to remember that making music should be a pleasure and not a hindrance and to realise that you only mask desolation for so long, he grasped onto the notion that he was the one in control of his life, his trajectory and his future. Nobody else.
Though for such a collection of life and mindset-shifting realisations, the songs that materialised for ‘We’re Never Getting Out’ are, despite their shimmering disposition, devastatingly sad. Every anxiety, every step back, every wrench of the heart that comes with realising the life you thought you had built is crumbling around you is on display in vivid colour. It’s heavy going, heart-breaking and spine-tinglingly honest in equal measure.
The heart-on-sleeve directness that British rock music so perfectly embodies and still sits proudly within the band’s foundations is very much present but with lashings of modern pop sensibility and outlandish structuring added, bringing it hurtling into the here and now. Like forcing the timeless passion of Bruce Springsteen and the warts and all unravelling of Weezer through the kaleidoscopic and intimate mesh of Bon Iver. Throw in exemplary performances from Ross McDonald of The 1975 on bass and Freddie Sheed, who has performed and recorded with everyone from Lewis Capaldi to Take That, on drums – “There are so many times where I wouldn’t have asked either of them to play because I thought there was no reason for them to say yes,” James remarks – and you have Deaf Havana as it has always meant to be. Vibrant, textured, daring andirresistibly catchy.
“Car Crash” is out now and streaming everywhere. ‘We’re Never Getting Out’ will be available October 3 via So Recordings/Civilians.
