The wait is finally over! Ceres are officially back with their sprawling new album ‘MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022)’, out October 4 via Cooking Vinyl Australia. A double album as ambitious as it is profoundly personal, ‘MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022)’ is the band’s first record in five years and is available for pre-order HERE.
Alongside news of the album comes two brilliant new singles Britney Spears and In The Valley. Britney Spears is a fists-flung barnburner that drags the absolute best out of every member of Ceres. A showcase in particular for multi-instrumentalist Stacey Cicivelli’s powerful vocals, the video sees her and Tom Lanyon share the driver’s seat with their achingly beautiful vocal harmonies narrating a nostalgic trip around the lush magic mountain.
Meanwhile, In The Valley pairs things right back with its delicate arrangement of piano, strings and voice musing on picking up the pieces of yourself, as broken as they may be, and starting again.
Ceres have never been a band to waste a note. Every chorus, deliberately constructed. Every communique, purposeful and impactful. Every live show, deeply meaningful and belted out with no single drop of fuel left in the tank. Everything has its right place and they are a band that would much rather say nothing than say something devoid of meaning or merit. And thus, sans fanfare, grandeur, or acknowledgement, the group was placed on hold in late 2019. Fitting, too, that shortly afterwards so was the world.
But even in the most static of our times, life moved forward. Bittersweet, agonising, magnificent life. Written and recorded over four years, Ceres’ new effort is a mammoth 25-track double album that isn’t done – or divided – by halves. As close to an auteur effort as a group project can be, ‘MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022)’ chronicles singer/songwriter Tom Lanyon’s deeply personal journey of rediscovery, nostalgia, patience, heartache, and joy. From his move back to his roots atop Melbourne’s Mt. Dandenong, to his agonising journey through a four-year battle to conceive a child, to the agony and heartache of a miscarriage, and the life-affirming joy of pregnancy and fatherhood finally realised.
“In 1997 there was a huge fire. My brother and I got evacuated by the CFA. I heard them say ‘it’s coming over the top of Magic Mountain’. I was so afraid,” says Lanyon.
“In 2019 we moved back the mountain. Bought a house in a valley. Settled in to start our family. We tried and failed and tried and failed. We were so afraid.
In 2022 you arrived. New and good and impossible and ours. You were not afraid.
In 1996, it all started. Nostalgia, melancholy, loss, absolution. 26 years in the making. MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022).”
At times rambunctious, at others reserved, ‘MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022)’ is, at its core, a treatise on life; of life lost and life new; of life long forgotten and life rediscovered; of life in all its beautiful, ugly, gut-wrenching, mundane splendour.
Engineered and mixed by Joel Taylor, and compositionally aided by Tom Bromley of Los Campesinos! fame, ‘MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022)’ is a dense, layered, stunning effort that will be pored over by listeners for years to come.
‘MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1996—2022)’ will be released on October 4 via Cooking Vinyl Australia
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With thanks to Deathproof PR
