The Cribs Unveil New Single “Never The Same” from Their Upcoming ‘Selling A Vibe’ Album

The Cribs shared a new track “Never The Same” yesterday from their forthcoming album Selling A Vibe. The track oozes a vibe of change and nostalgia with raw energy. Fans can catch the group on tour later this month in the UK.

According to a press release from The Cribs’ management, this Thursday 8th January the band also begins a run of instore and outstore release week shows up and down the UK. In March the band kicks off a full UK headline tour.

Listen to “Never The Same”:

Selling A Vibe marks their first full length release in over five years, with August’s lead single ‘Summer Seizures‘ seeing a deservedly passionate response from fans and media alike. Its follow-up ‘A Point Too Hard To Make‘ paired chiming guitars with classic Cribs call-and-response dual vocals, and landed on the BBC 6 Music A-list. On new single ‘Never The Same‘ the band considers personal evolution, and what comes from leaving a part of one’s self in the past.

Guitarist and singer Ryan Jarman comments: “Never The Same is kind of a throwback to our original approach: trim all the fat, bring it in as short as possible and keep out of the way…streamlined. Stylish. It’s almost a little paradoxical as lyrically it’s about feeling like a different person at this point in life, and missing the chaos of your previous existence, even if it wouldn’t make sense anymore.”

Watch the video for “Never The Same”:

Bassist and singer Gary Jarman says: “We wrote Never The Same the evening that we returned home from Italy, after playing Louis Tomlinson’s ‘Away From Home’ festival. The night before, we had been talking with Louis’ manager about maybe writing and/or producing some tracks for his next LP, so upon our return to Wakefield we got to work and banged this out, fully formed, in a couple of hours. And then we became attached to it and decided to keep it for ourselves! I think that the freedom of conceiving it for someone else just meant that we didn’t overthink anything, and just got straight to the point – it came together fast. So yeah, in an alternate timeline it could’ve been a Louis song.”

He continues about the video: “We have been interested in directing our own video for a while. Ryan in particular has always been very interested in film, and had recently made a video for Exclamation Pony that had come out really good. So we bought a bunch of 8mm film and decided to try and document our US tour. Shot on location in San Diego and featuring live footage from the shows, the video was mostly shot by Ryan and then edited by Gary, so it’s all on us. We were busy so we knew the chances of us all getting together to make another video on 16mm was unlikely, and this allowed us to try and keep it in the same world whilst also having the opportunity to make something candid and honest.”

Pre-order upcoming album Selling A Vibe HERE.

Listen to new single ‘Never The Same’ on streaming services here and share the video via YouTube below.

Buy tickets for all shows HERE.

The Cribs – Instore + outstore release week shows

• 08 Jan – Circuit, Kingston, UK
• 09 Jan – Rough Trade East, London, UK – SOLD OUT
• 09 Jan – Rough Trade East, London, UK – SOLD OUT
• 10 Jan – Rough Trade, Liverpool, UK – SOLD OUT 
• 10 Jan – Rough Trade, Liverpool, UK – SOLD OUT
• 11 Jan – Pie & Vinyl (signing), Southsea, UK
• 11 Jan – Papillon, Southampton, UK
• 12 Jan – Thekla, Bristol, UK – SOLD OUT
• 13 Jan – O2 Academy, Oxford, UK
• 14 Jan – The Parish, Huddersfield, UK
• 14 Jan – The Parish, Huddersfield, UK – SOLD OUT
• 15 Jan – Oran Mor, Glasgow, UK
• 15 Jan – Oran Mor, Glasgow, UK – SOLD OUT

The Cribs – UK headline tour

• 18 Mar – Boiler Shop, Newcastle, UK ^
• 20 Mar – Foundry, Sheffield, UK ^ (SOLD OUT)
• 21 Mar – Albert Hall, Manchester, UK ^ (SOLD OUT)
• 22 Mar – O2 Institute 1, Birmingham, UK ^
• 24 Mar – Rock City, Nottingham, UK ^
• 25 Mar – Tramshed, Cardiff, UK ^
• 27 Mar – Concorde 2, Brighton, UK ^
• 28 Mar – Concorde 2, Brighton, UK ^ (SOLD OUT)
• 11 Jul – Millennium Square, Leeds, UK
• 26 Jul – Truck Festival, Steventon, UK

^ = Support from Courting

About The Cribs

For the three Jarman brothers, The Cribs has always been a heart-on-sleeve endeavour, documenting a realness and honesty, imbued with a raw spirit and a love for pop melodies, that winks with a healthy skepticism at a world increasingly weighed down by quantity over quality, style over substance. You need only look as far as the new album title for evidence of that. It can be argued though that with Selling A Vibe, that honesty is increasingly turned in the direction of each other, the first time they have so openly done so on one of their records.

With a feeling in the camp that the band were stuck on the release-tour-release-tour treadmill, and with the brothers living apart across three timezones, they knew they needed to revive the essence of their relationship as family, and get away from solely feeling like band members. A summer spent together with no music, no writing, just reconnection proved the perfect place to start that process, something they say they’re grateful for the opportunity to do after 20 years together making music.

If behind the scenes Selling A Vibe became about a return to truer relationships, the goal with producer Patrick Wimberly was very much about not reverting to type. Having worked with bucket-list rock producers on previous albums – Edwyn Collins, Alex Kapranos, Nick Launay, Dave Fridmann, Steve Albini, and Ric Ocasek to name a few – the appointment of former Chairlift man Patrick Wimberly for Selling A Vibe came from a place of continued curiosity, possibility, and adventure. They wanted to work with someone who operated in a more contemporary way, and Wimberly’s list of production credits (Solange, MGMT, Lil Yachty) more than caught the eye. “We’d always said if we made another record we would specifically focus on enhancing the pop element of the band, so Patrick’s way of working and experience in that realm seemed a great fit whilst also being a completely new experience”. For The Cribs, it wasn’t about recapturing lightning-in-a-bottle moments of yore, it was about breaking the bottle entirely and seeing what could be inside. That meant a slower, more considered recording process, and time in the studio to indulge their love of melody. Selling A Vibe becomes a record not only anchored in reconnection, but one put together to illicit that same response.

Bassist and vocalist Gary Jarman says: “I think as time has gone by our albums have become more and more open – and as such the songs on Selling A Vibe feel very personal. So it can be nerve wracking releasing them because they matter so much to us. I know that may sound overly romantic or idealistic, but ultimately – it’s the only thing that matters when all is said and done. Did we connect with people? We don’t want this to be seen as an “indie rock” record or a “punk” record or whatever – all those things that used to seem to matter to us – our only hope is that people enjoy and connect with the songs and lyrics for what they are. We want them to be for everyone, really. And as such, I suppose you could say that makes it our most ambitious album, as we have fully given ourselves over to that. In short, we sincerely hope you enjoy it.”

Key to the band’s creative output is that they now only release music when it feels like they have something new to contribute. A new record needs to add something to their, and their fans lives. In this case, the renewal of treasured relationships seems as good a reason as any for their return after a five-year absence.

More about new album Selling A Vibe

Brothers won’t break. Not these brothers, at least – Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman, known collectively as The Cribs. After two decades and nine albums as one of Britain’s best-loved bands, the Wakefield-born siblings have weathered enough storms, onstage and off, to realise that an indestructible bond exists between them. For years, it’s fizzed beneath the surface of their sound, perforating every thrash of guitar, every snap of snare, every impassioned vocal, roared back at them at live shows by sweat-drenched, devoted crowds. But rarely have the band acknowledged this bond out loud. “It’s not something we ever really said to each other explicitly,” admits bassist and lead vocalist Gary. That all changed, however, with the creation of Selling A Vibe – their bold new album, which captures The Cribs at their bottle-rocket energetic best.

Produced by MGMT and Caroline Polachek collaborator Patrick Wimberly, and mixed by Lars Stalfors (Lil Peep/St. Vincent/The Mars Volta) Selling A Vibe is an unapologetic celebration of family. It’s about finding your way back to health with help from those loved ones, the band explain. “On our first records, we were just writing about our individual experiences. That’s a really verdant field of inspiration, but as you go along, life points you towards bigger things to write about,” says Gary. “But this time, I realised when I was writing the lyrics that all of the songs were really rooted in the only consistent thing – and the most valuable thing – and that was our relationship as family. The thing that has seen us through to this point”

Maybe that should be no wonder, given the tumultuous time the brothers went through to arrive at this record. The last Cribs album, Night Network, looked to the world like a triumph for the trio, who were back from the brink with a bang. The band had been “in two minds about whether to carry on,” Ryan remembers, after a series of spirit-sapping legal tangles with their former label. But they persevered, and were rewarded with their most glowing reviews since 2007’s Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever when Night Network arrived in 2020.

From the outside, it might have seemed like The Cribs were riding high. But to the brothers themselves, the experience of releasing the record felt a little hollow. Separated from each other and unable to tour because of the Covid-19 pandemic, they found themselves in their respective homes, thousands of miles apart – guitarist Ryan in New York, Gary in Portland, Oregon, and drummer Ross in the family’s native Wakefield – reflecting on what their brotherhood had become. “In the beginning, we were brothers who had a band. And I think we realised we’d become a band that happened to be brothers,” says Ryan, explaining how the break that followed Night Network afforded them an opportunity to fix that – as well as personal issues caused by decades on the road and in the studio, in perpetual motion. “There was a lot of unhealthiness I had to leave behind,” says Ryan, who documents that struggle on Looking For The Wrong Guy, one of Selling A Vibe’s most emotionally charged songs.“I’m just wasting away watching the time go by,” the guitarist sings over chords written in a dream-like state at four in the morning.

Elsewhere are aching anthems like Distractions (“one of my favourite songs on the record,” says Ross), the danceable Self Respect (a song that emerged from a “Michael Jackson-type bassline,” reveals Gary) and the hazardously catchy A Point Too Hard To Make. “When we wrote that one in the room, it felt like an indie-rock song. But now you can’t really put your finger on where it comes from,” says Gary. “It sounds like it could have come from any musical period of the last four decades. Or from the future.”

That might be down to the album’s producer, former Chairlift member Patrick Wimberly, who helped the group adopt contemporary pop recording techniques for the first time, as an experiment into where it might take their sound. “We needed the perfect balance of somebody who worked in the modern paradigm but understood who we were, our history and what we’re about. Not an easy thing to find. And that’s how we ended up with Patrick,” Gary says of Patrick, who welcomed the band into his Brooklyn studio, The CRC. The Cribs are no strangers to collaboration, with Johnny Marr and Lee Ranaldo past contributors to records, and Steve Albini, Edwyn Collins, Alex Kapranos and Ric Ocasek among their former producers. In each case, they’ve left those collaborators room to work their magic. With Wimberly, however, Gary says the band “entirely gave the reins over” like never before, resulting in songs that flew off in exciting new directions they hadn’t anticipated.

One track on the album, You’ll Tell Me Anything, was recorded by Gordon Raphael (The Strokes) early in the writing process, but found its way onto the final tracklisting after additional tweaks and mixing during the album sessions proper: “We knew there was no need to re-record that one – Gordon had absolutely nailed it – we’d have just been trying to replicate that early energy”.

Selling A Vibe crescendos with a song not recorded in Wimberly’s Brooklyn studio, however, but in a basement in Portland, Oregon. “There could never be any shame for the things that we would never change, after all this time holding the line,” the group chant in unison over emotive chords and soulful backbeat. It’s a song about being in a band with your brothers, which lyrically Gary “felt a little bit self conscious about bringing to Ross and Ryan. But to me, it’s kind of owning what we are. There’s something special about being in The Cribs with them. And instead of being self-effacing, I wanted to say that on the record. It felt really pure, writing that one together.”

The song in question’s title? Brothers Won’t Break. Because of course they don’t. Not these brothers. Selling A Vibe is The Cribs’ monument to that fact. Listen to it loud.

The Cribs – Selling A Vibe album tracklisting

1. Dark Luck
2. Selling A Vibe
3. A Point Too Hard To Make
4. Never The Same
5. Summer Seizures
6. Looking For The Wrong Guy
7. If Our Paths Never Crossed
8. Self Respect
9. You’ll Tell Me Anything
10. Rose Mist
11. Distractions
12. Brothers Won’t Break

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