Tiny Ruins (Marathon Artists, ★★★★ MOJO, David Lynch) | new single out now
TINY RUINS
RELEASE NEW SINGLE
STREAM ‘OUT OF PHASE’ HERE
NEW ALBUM CEREMONY
OUT THIS FRIDAY VIA MARATHON ARTISTS
Tiny Ruins have reached peak empathy with both each other and their audience
★★★★ MOJO
Since 2009, New Zealand band Tiny Ruins have been steadily making good, blissful indie rock… ‘Dorothy Bay’ is a great reintroduction to a beloved, steadfast indie band Paste
The Crab / Waterbaby’ [is] achingly pretty Stereogum
Lyrically, few do it better – sharply poetic, each revelation from Tiny Ruins takes your breath away Clash Music
Tiny Ruins, the project of New Zealand musician Hollie Fullbrook, today release ‘Out Of Phase’, the final single to emerge ahead of forthcoming new album Ceremony, due April 28th on Marathon Artists. A mineral rich song, seductive in both pace and its compact melodic punch, ‘Out Of Phase’ is propelled by the interweaving lines of Fullbrook’s tumbling fingerpicked guitar work and Cass Basil’s hofner bass. It’s a unity which belies the track’s moody, questioning undercurrents - as Fullbrook puts it; Why do we fight, and where does it take us to? Where do phases of misalignment, seasons of unrest, leave us?
Listen to Tiny Ruins’ ‘Out Of Phase’
The follow-up to 2019’s celebrated Olympic Girls, Ceremony goes deep into all the old and murky mysteries of what it means to be human – and sometimes it nearly goes under. Yet these songs also show how you can find the strength to swim from the shipwreck, push through the silt, and surface into another new morning. Another new chance.
Ceremony washes in and takes you out like a strong tide, its songs “chapters” of a saga set on the shores of Tāmaki Makaurau's (aka Auckland’s) Manukau Harbour. Known to locals as “Old Murky,” its western fringe of the Waitākere Ranges are home to Fullbrook. And while the harbour itself is a treacherous and oft-polluted body of water, move to one of its many peaceful inlets and it’s all tidal flats, shellfish and birdlife. “It’s beautiful but also muddy, dirty and neglected. It’s a real meeting of nature and humanity,” says Fullbrook. Although the things Fullbrook was struck by are annotated across Ceremony as luminously as a naturalist’s scrapbook, Ceremony is not a watercolour ramble through the natural world. These songs are not afraid of getting earth under the nails, of digging deep into some of the hardest matters of human existence. How do you move from loss and grief to acceptance and some kind of peace? How do you live knowing that you are surrounded by forces far beyond your control?
Ceremony’s productions are maximal, deep, complex. No moment is squandered without a clever polyrhythm, a curious harmonic tension introduced, an unexpected timbre. The intuitive weave of instrumentation - from Freer’s deft and inventive drumming and Basil’s conversational bass lines to Healy’s lightening-strikes of electric guitar - land Fullbrook’s hard songs in an blissfully warm bedrock of sound - steadied in a kind of musical trust fall.
Watch the ‘Ceremony Sessions’ Version of “Dogs Dreaming”
Listen to “The Crab / Waterbaby”
Pre-order Ceremony
Album artwork - Christiane Shortal
Ceremony Tracklist
1. Dogs Dreaming
2. Daylight Savings
3. Diving & Soaring
4. In Light Of Everything
5. Out Of Phase
6. Dorothy Bay
7. Seafoam Green
8. Earthly Things
9. Dear Annie
10. Sounds Like
11. The Crab/Waterbaby
