The Boxer Rebellion fifth studio album Ocean by Ocean
London quartet The Boxer Rebellion have a knack of writing album after album of jaw dropping beauty and their fifth is no exception. Now in their 15th year as a band, Ocean by Ocean is quite simply The Boxer Rebellion’s most complete record to date and the band today announce its release on the 29th April, as well as the first track off the album, Keep Me Close.
A deeply personal track to lead singer Nathan Nicholson, Keep Me Close is “about opening yourself up. About the leap you take when you give yourself over, unwaveringly, to someone else. It's about letting yourself be judged, about being open to change to be closer to someone” - and will be available as an instant download with album pre-orders immediately and can be streamed on Soundcloud and YouTube.
For a band of early Oasis fans, they sounded nothing like them, as 2005 debut album Exits proved, sounding instead both out of time and place, individual in an era of identikits. Their debut won over celebrity fans such as Ewan McGregor (their music can be heard on his TV Show Long Way Down), and led to reviews and features in UK Press such as The Sun, NME and Kerrang. In 2007, they recorded their second album Union. They knew that they had created something special here, a belief that kept them plugging away at it until, in 2009, they finally secured its release, on their own label. Haunted by Talk Talk’s elegiac soundscapes, and Sigur Ros’s celestial melodies, it was cinematic and hypnotic. And it quickly came to the attentions of iTunes, which made its first single, Evacuate their worldwide single of the week. The album now had a global reach, and they quickly made chart history by becoming the first ever unsigned act to enter the Billboard Top 100 in the US on digital sales alone.
Two years later, they released The Cold Still, produced by the legendary Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Laura Marling, The Vaccines) and recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. Like the songs on Union before it, several tracks from The Cold Still and following album Promises were handpicked for use in TV series and feature films, which means that anyone who has watched, over the years, NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill, Nikita, The Vampire Diaries, Lincoln Heights, Going The Distance, Being Human and Shameless will be, perhaps unwittingly, already familiar with their music. Similarly, in 2015, lead singer Nathan Nicholson lent his voice to the tracks In The Beginning and Heartbeat from the critically acclaims and triple j-featured Claptone album Charmer, leading to a whole new group of fans ubiquitously singing along to his brooding vocals without even knowing it.
In 2014, the band had a line-up change. Original guitarist Todd Howe left, and was replaced by Andrew Smith. They then began work on new material as men to some extent settled in their lives: in their 30s, in relationships, and as fathers. Three years since the bands 4th album Promises, and with the addition of new guitarist Andrew Smith, Ocean by Ocean is an accomplished, beautifully orchestrated and impeccably freighted album. Their sound is brooding and ruminative, glacial, Nathan’s rising falsetto casting an eerie lava lamp glow on songs that sound good before midnight, and even better afterwards. Ocean by Ocean is a transcendent record infused as much with darkness as it is light. There is brooding melancholy here that often translates into an emotional sucker punch. The Boxer Rebellion have always been independent of spirit, and have never sounded quite like anybody else. They have been there, playing the background of our consciousness, and they are just getting started.
Ocean by Ocean track list:
A deeply personal track to lead singer Nathan Nicholson, Keep Me Close is “about opening yourself up. About the leap you take when you give yourself over, unwaveringly, to someone else. It's about letting yourself be judged, about being open to change to be closer to someone” - and will be available as an instant download with album pre-orders immediately and can be streamed on Soundcloud and YouTube.
For a band of early Oasis fans, they sounded nothing like them, as 2005 debut album Exits proved, sounding instead both out of time and place, individual in an era of identikits. Their debut won over celebrity fans such as Ewan McGregor (their music can be heard on his TV Show Long Way Down), and led to reviews and features in UK Press such as The Sun, NME and Kerrang. In 2007, they recorded their second album Union. They knew that they had created something special here, a belief that kept them plugging away at it until, in 2009, they finally secured its release, on their own label. Haunted by Talk Talk’s elegiac soundscapes, and Sigur Ros’s celestial melodies, it was cinematic and hypnotic. And it quickly came to the attentions of iTunes, which made its first single, Evacuate their worldwide single of the week. The album now had a global reach, and they quickly made chart history by becoming the first ever unsigned act to enter the Billboard Top 100 in the US on digital sales alone.
Two years later, they released The Cold Still, produced by the legendary Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Laura Marling, The Vaccines) and recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. Like the songs on Union before it, several tracks from The Cold Still and following album Promises were handpicked for use in TV series and feature films, which means that anyone who has watched, over the years, NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill, Nikita, The Vampire Diaries, Lincoln Heights, Going The Distance, Being Human and Shameless will be, perhaps unwittingly, already familiar with their music. Similarly, in 2015, lead singer Nathan Nicholson lent his voice to the tracks In The Beginning and Heartbeat from the critically acclaims and triple j-featured Claptone album Charmer, leading to a whole new group of fans ubiquitously singing along to his brooding vocals without even knowing it.
In 2014, the band had a line-up change. Original guitarist Todd Howe left, and was replaced by Andrew Smith. They then began work on new material as men to some extent settled in their lives: in their 30s, in relationships, and as fathers. Three years since the bands 4th album Promises, and with the addition of new guitarist Andrew Smith, Ocean by Ocean is an accomplished, beautifully orchestrated and impeccably freighted album. Their sound is brooding and ruminative, glacial, Nathan’s rising falsetto casting an eerie lava lamp glow on songs that sound good before midnight, and even better afterwards. Ocean by Ocean is a transcendent record infused as much with darkness as it is light. There is brooding melancholy here that often translates into an emotional sucker punch. The Boxer Rebellion have always been independent of spirit, and have never sounded quite like anybody else. They have been there, playing the background of our consciousness, and they are just getting started.
Ocean by Ocean track list:
1. Weapon
2. Big Ideas
3. Let’s Disappear
4. Pull Yourself Together
5. Firework
6. Keep Me Close
7. Redemption
8. The Fog I Was Lost In
9. You Can Love Me
10. Let It Go
2. Big Ideas
3. Let’s Disappear
4. Pull Yourself Together
5. Firework
6. Keep Me Close
7. Redemption
8. The Fog I Was Lost In
9. You Can Love Me
10. Let It Go