PRE-ORDER - EXPECTED END OF SEPTEMBER
Dutch four-piece Lewsberg release their fourth studio album, Out And About. Since forming in 2016, Lewsberg have gone from strength to strength. Despite never really considering themselves as a ‘productive band’, together they have released three LPs, one EP and a series of cassettes and 7''’s, including 2022’s Six Hills, which was released via Dan Carey’s Speedy Wunderground single series.
Lewsberg are named after writer and fellow Rotterdammer Robert Loesberg, famous for his dangerous novel Enige Defecten from 1974. This is one of the band’s main sources of inspiration: the counterculture and big-city cynicism of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet there is also a softer side to Lewsberg’s music and lyrics. On this album Out And About, this side is more present than ever. Rudimentary pop and rock songs are deliberately kept bare, only occasionally embellished with a violin or organ part. In the lyrics, the tendency towards existentialism and black humour is nuanced with an almost naive openness and engagement.
Recorded in Amsterdam in the early spring of 2023 with producer Yulya Divakova, Out And About sees founding members Shalita Dietrich (vocals, bass guitar), Michiel Klein (guitar) and Arie van Vliet (vocals, guitar, violin) joined for the first time on record by drummer and vocalist Marrit Meinema, who joined the band in the autumn of 2021.
“Our first two records were pretty much our take on the music and literature that Arie and I had been talking about for years,” says guitarist Michiel. “Our third album, In Your Hands, was about keeping things small, quiet and intimate, partly in reaction to some of the unease we occasionally felt when Lewsberg was being lumped in with these muscular testosterone filled rock bands,” he continues. “For this album I was inspired by how I saw the personalities in the band when we became a quartet again, with the addition of Marrit,” he continues.
Out And About embraces a collaborative spirit, allowing each member to contribute their unique songwriting talents. The result is a collection of tracks that capture the band’s collective creative energy and their individual perspectives. The lyrics for A Different View were written via a text exchange between Arie and Marrit, Arie being responsible for the first half and Marrit for the second. “It was a bit intimidating but also a very gratifying experience to write something for a band whose lyricism you have admired for quite a while,” she says.
The album also showcases the continued expansion of Lewsberg’s sonic palette, with Arie van Vliet’s violin playing adding a rich texture to tracks like Going Places and Canines. “The violin part for Canines had been in my head for almost a decade already, but it never translated into a song before. I’m happy Michiel found a way to make it work,” he says. “The lyrics for Canines were written by Shalita. I really like how they seem to be a bit more dreamlike and remote than the things I write, but at the same time are still very concrete, matter-of-fact and to the point,” he continues. Dietrich also wrote the lyrics for Without A Doubt, the first single to come from the new album.
Compared to their first three albums, Out And About feels lighter, calling to mind the laid back sound of bands like The Feelies, Marine Girls and Young Marble Giants, whilst remaining distinctly Lewsberg.
