Lo-fi punk/shoegaze duo CULTDREAMS (formerly known as Kamikaze Girls) are pleased to announce that their second album, Things That Hurt, will be released on 16th August 2019 via Big Scary Monsters Records.
Receiving its worldwide exclusive first play from Daniel P. Carter on the BBC Radio One Rock Show last night as his ‘Rockest Record’, lead single ‘We Never Rest’ examines the pressure of expectation to conform to an exhausting society, and features Katie Dvorak and David F. Bello of The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. The single is out now and available to stream on all good digital service providers.
“People are expected to work a stable job, to earn as much money as possible, to live what is said to be a ‘traditional’ heteronormative lifestyle,” vocalist/guitarist Lucinda Livingstone explains of the song. “Personally I very much live in a bubble—people couldn’t care less about how I live, who I live with, how much money I do or don’t earn, what I look like, or how I choose to spend my time, but then it’s so easy to get used to the bubble, and once you’re out it’s not like that anymore.”
Forthcoming new album Things That Hurt is the product of growth and change for the band—it’s a record that finds Livingstone able to step more confidently away from her own trauma. Typically
transparent, like much of her writing, the record’s title is succinct in its outline of its lyrical contents: “It’s about grief and loss,” she says, “but also we’re living in a country going
through absolute turmoil what with the UK’s current political climate. There are so many things going on to dishearten everyone, all the time; so many minorities and different cultures affected.
I don’t know where my place in it is anymore—it’s so hard to try and make big changes or help, because it seems like we can never do enough.”
Cultdreams turned plenty of heads with their 2017 debut album Seafoam, with the pair receiving praise from the likes of Kerrang! Magazine, Total Guitar, She Shreds, The Quietus, Drowned in Sound,
Louder Than War, New Noise Magazine, Substream, UPSET, Discovered Magazine, The Skinny, Alternative Press and many more. On Seafoam the band boldly and unflinchingly explored depression and PTSD
whilst shining a light on harmful behaviour, sexual harassment, and everyday misogyny in society.
The band took two years to tour the material internationally, including support slots with Enter Shikari, Pianos Become The Teeth, Foxing, The World Is A Beautiful Place…, Gnarwolves, and Nervus.
There were also diverse festival appearances at 2000 Trees, Arctangent, The Great Escape, TRUCK Festival, NXNE, Winnipeg Jazz Festival, Ottawa Explosion, and The Fest, plus a gruelling eight-week
DIY tour of the USA and Canada which the band booked themselves.
