It didn’t take long for the title of Basement’s debut record, I Wish I Could Stay Here, to seem like something of a misnomer. Just a year after the album’s release, it was already becoming clear that the group had no intention of staying there–whether that just meant their historic port town home of Ipswich in Suffolk, England; or the relative confines of the turn-of-the-century emo sound they’d already deftly mastered. The promising young band was setting their sights somewhere else as they prepared to make their landmark sophomore album, Colourmeinkindness. The record started to carry Basement to the brink of wider success, only to find the band announcing a hiatus months before it even came out–but a decade later the album’s clear influence, and Basement’s triumphant return, are proof of Colourmeinkindness’ era-defining impact.
Back in the summer of 2012, however, Basement found themselves on the west coast of America for the first time, beginning to record their hotly anticipated new album. But the band had arrived slightly unprepared; guitarist Ronan Crix claims the band only had half the songs written for the soon-to-be massive album. His bandmate and other guitarist, Alex Henery, claimed it was “the most chaotic process we have ever gone about writing a record.” Henery recalls that the band managed to “work as hard and as quickly” as they could to finish writing the other half of the album, including staying up until 4 a.m. their first night in the studio. But the hectic pace and intense focus paid off, resulting in an ambitious musical evolution that drew together the threads of modern punk and emo with past widescreen guitar rock to create something that felt urgent and new.
Colourmeinkindness found Basement pulling from not only one of emo’s zeniths–early Sunny Day Real Estate–but also channeling heavy and sometimes hazy ‘90s alt-rock, with hints of behemoths like Pixies, Silverchair, and Catherine Wheel shaping the sound. Vocalist Andrew Fisher fit that grunge mold of a maudlin-but-thoughtful protagonist, ruminating on toxic relationships, personal desolation, and desperate longing, with slivers of optimism occasionally peeking through. From the dynamic one-two punch of churning opener “Whole” into the balladic doom of “Covet”, to the sneering grunge of “Black” and gentle ease of “Comfort”, Basement effortlessly moved between sounds and styles while keeping the underlying energy of their roots in punk and hardcore.
