Chamberlain - Red Weather LP (Clear / White marbled)

Chamberlain - Red Weather lp - Clear White marbled vinyl.

Sometimes revisiting the past is the only way to see the future. Indeed, the five members of Chamberlain thought they were just taking a trip down memory lane when they reunited in 2018 for the first time in nine years on a short tour to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their final studio album, “The Moon My Saddle.” But beyond celebrating old glories, that time together led to something quite unexpected: a renewed commitment to the creative spark these musicians first discovered when they were teenagers, and the first new Chamberlain album since the turn of the century, “Red Weather,” which will be released Nov. 20 by Arctic Rodeo.

The 10-track project was produced by My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel, a longtime friend who grew up playing in bands in the ‘90s alongside the members of Chamberlain (vocalist David Moore, guitarists Adam Rubenstein and Clay Snyder, bassist Curtis Mead and drummer Charlie Walker) first in Indianapolis and later Bloomington, Ind. Adding to the familial vibe, “Red Weather” was funded largely by Chamberlain’s legions of fans via a Kickstarter campaign and includes a new version of the song “Some Other Sky,” which was debuted during the 2018 reunion tour and later released as a single.

Chamberlain disbanded in 2000, with its members moving on to a variety of other musical pursuits in New York, Los Angeles, Nashville and Indianapolis. The group briefly reunited in 2009 before coming together again for the “Moon My Saddle” anniversary tour in 2018, which included its first shows in Europe in more than 20 years.

“Every time we’ve had an opportunity to play together over the past decade, we’ve talked about how fun it would be to make another album,” Rubenstein says. “But we’ve always returned to our respective lives and not taken the next step. This time, we put some of that old preciousness aside and let our creativity steer us to the right place.”

“We have always been so deliberate — it’s that old Midwestern emo mentality of slaving over every verse and transition. But this time, a lot of the songs were played live in the studio, and several of them have scratch vocal takes,” Moore adds. “That immediacy of the songs is what I’m drawn to most on the record.” 

“Red Weather” is a welcome return from a band that helped define the Midwestern post-hardcore scene, deftly balancing moments that recall its revered ‘90s work on albums such as “Fate’s Got a Driver” and “The Moon My Saddle” with a forward-looking sound and spirit born from nearly 30 years of friendship and collaboration.  A number of the songs are truly unlike anything in the Chamberlain catalog. The groovy, falsetto-tinged “Lion in the Well” wasn’t on the original list of songs the band planned to record until Walker told his bandmates it was his favorite amongst all the demos. Moore wrote it as “an unabashed, sexy song about finding somebody that you really, really are into and those beginnings of a relationship when you want to dig in.”