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Jul 01, 2020 By Christopher Roberts This Is the Kit

This Is the Kit, the project led by British-born singer/songwriter Kate Stables, has announced a new album, Off Off On, and shared its first single, “This is What You Did,” via a video for the track. Off Off On is due out October 23 via Rough Trade. Check out the “This is What You Did” video below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

Off Off On is the follow-up to 2017’s breakthrough record, Moonshine Freeze, which was their first album for Rough Trade. Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz produced the album.

“We were on the same page about a lot of musical ideas, as well as doing things I wouldn’t do musically,” Stables says of Kaufman in a press release. “It was a lovely mixture of ‘you’re exactly in my brain and exactly at the opposite end of my brain.’”

Stables’ band in the studio included Rozi Plain (bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), Jesse D Vernon (guitar, keyboards), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drum/vox). The album was recorded at Real World Studios in the UK and finished just before the pandemic.

In the press release Stables says that “This Is What You Did” is “a bit of a panic attack song.” She adds: “The negative voices of other people that are your own voice. Or are they? Hard to say when you’re in this kind of a place. How to get out of this place? Needing to get outside more. Cosmically topical what with these recent days of inside all the time. Knowing the things you should do because they’re good for you and make you feel better, but for some reason you still stay inside and fester in your own self-doubt and regret and self-loathing. Fun times! We all get into negative mind loops sometimes. Especially when you’re not getting the fresh air and outside time you need to stay healthy.”

Since Moonshine Freeze Staples has also been performing with The National and sang guest vocals on their 2019 album I Am Easy to Find.

“I think it did me loads of good,” says Stables of her experience with The National. “It was so brilliant when I was writing to be away from my songs and the responsibility of overseeing a band or a project—just to forget about that for a while and be a minion in someone else’s band was brilliant, I loved it. I think it really helped my writing and my getting through whatever I needed to get through.”

Read our 2017 interview with This Is the Kit.

Off Off On Tracklist:

01 “Found Out”
02 “Started Again”
03 “This Is What You Did”
04 “No Such Thing”
05 “Slider”
06 “Coming To Get You Nowhere”
07 “Carry Us Please”
08 “Off Off On”
09 “Shinbone Soap
10 “Was Magician”
11 “Keep Going”

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