New Video: Death Bells Shares Brooding and Anthemic “Take My Spirit Now”

Since their formation in Sydney back in 2015, Death Bells — Will Canning (vocals) and Remy Veselis (guitar) — have firmly cemented a sound that effortlessly blurs elements of post-punk and garage rock, centered around Canning’s baritone and Vessels’ wiry, reverb-soaked guitar lines. And as a result, the duo quickly became a mainstay in the national and international alternative/underground/indie scenes.

As Canning and Vessels have grown up and matured, the band has evolved through a handful of releases — 2016’s self-titled debut EP, 2017’s full-length debut, Standing at the Edge of the World and a seven inch through Funeral Party Records and a 2019’s “Around The Bend”/”Life Stands Still” single through Metropolitan Indian. 

The Aussie duo relocated to Los Angeles in 2018. The band’s current iteration has managed to really blossom: They signed to Dais Records, who released their sophomore album 2020’s New Signs of Life, an effort that saw them embracing their diverse tastes to craft expansive, hook-driven songs. As a response to pandemic-related quarantines and lockdowns, the duo secluded themselves at Bombay Beach last year, to record a live session that featured five tracks off New Songs of Life titled Live from Bombay.

Last year’s Between Here & Everywhere was recorded with Colin Knight at Paradise Studios. The nine-song album saw the duo adopting a collaborative approach, as they collaborated with an experienced cast of players on keys, strings, piano and backing vocals. The album’s material represents the pair’s continued growth as artists and people and deeply inspired — and informed — by the the vastness, messiness and oddness of their adopted home. Featuring lyrics that the duo consider “narrative, but not autobiographical,” the album’s material ebbs and flows from harrowing to hopeful, and are born of intrigue, intimacy and a sense of “looking outward,” as the Sydney-born, Los Angeles-based duo explain.

The album featured two singles I managed to write about:

• “Hysteria,” which bristled with a sense of urgency and immediacy while being rooted in the personal and deeply universal — the search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless, mad world, and the desire to just pack up and leave it all behind. “’Hysteria’ was one of the last songs we wrote as we were putting together the new album,” the duo explain. “It was one of those moments where the tune just figured itself out. It feels urgent, immediate and honest, and we’re very proud of it.”
• “Lifespring” a brooding and hypnotic bit of post punk featuring Vaselis’ wiry bursts of guitar, thumping four-on-the-floor, glistening synths and a relentless motorik groove paired with a rousingly anthemic chorus. And while being inspired — and deeply indebted — to the sounds of the late ’70s and early ’80s, the song describes our bleak moment with an uncanny specificity.

Between Here & Everywhere‘s highly-anticipated follow-up Take My Spirit Now is slated for a July 21, 2023 release through Dais Records. Written and recored late last year in intimate, focused sessions at Paradise Studios, after months of touring across North America and Europe, the new material sees the band introducing a decidedly new sound — jagged guitars careening through towering feedback and textured drums. The band enlisted longtime friend Burning Rose Records’ Morgan Wright to mix the EP. Wright’s background in electronic music influenced the more programmed elements of the material.

“Take My Spirit Now,” the first single and title track off the forthcoming EP is built around a sinuous and propulsive bass line, fluttering feedback, boom bap-like drumming, angular and jagged. reverb-soaked guitars paired with Canning’s achingly plaintive baritone, a dreamy bridge section and the duo’s unerring knack for writing bombastic, rousingly anthemic hooks. But the song is thematically touches upon love, paranoia and destiny — and features a weary and uncertain narrator seemingly questioning everything.

“Take My Spirit Now” was the first song that began to feel fully realized when we were recording late last year,” Death Bells’ Will Canning explains. “There’s something wild and dangerous about the sound of it, which inspired some of the chorus’ lyrics. The song is more about a feeling than a specific time or place. 

Directed by Colin Fletcher, the accompanying video follows an assortment of characters, including the band’s Will Canning sitting in the backseat of a car, going off on a ride — to an unknown and unseen destination. At points, the car drives on, without passengers. “We’re portraying a simple analogy — the idea that sitting in the backseat, going along with the ride, is fun. Sometimes you’re on the ride alone, sometimes with someone else,” Colin Fletcher says. “Who’s driving? Doesn’t matter. Where are they going? Doesn’t matter.”