Fresh off tour with Grizzly Bear, Liima have shared a second track and video from their forthcoming album 1982 (out 3 November on City Slang) and announced a European headline tour.
The Danish-Finnish group, featuring the three members of Efterklang alongside drummer Tatu Rönkkö, share this latest cut 2-Hearted, with front man Casper Clausen commenting: ‘2-Hearted is about a conflict of the love for two different directions – wanting two different people or opposite directions in life at the same time, and to find an acceptance within the situation rather than a choice. We wrote this song in Viseu, Portugal at the Jardins Efemeros Festival. It’s the first song we have made using the often-damned auto-tune effect. We feel the auto-tune contra the clean vocal fits the duality of this song.’
In the year 1982, Time Magazine chose the first ever non-human ‘person of the year’; the Personal Computer. It’s also the year that Liima’s Casper Clausen was born, with the other three band members born in the surrounding years. Though 1982 is not an album that tries to mimic the sounds of that year, it is an album borne of influences and circumstances that stem back to that point in time. It’s an album that sees the band questioning the concept of identity and our place in time – as much an album of existential questioning and of looking forward as it is of nostalgia and reflection.
Liima was born as much of breaking old habits as building new habits, and their second album, provides a masterclass in pushing beyond one’s established comfort zones. Like its predecessor, 1982 was written during four residencies, beginning in January 2016 – before Liima’s debut ii was even released – at The London Edition, where Casper Clausen, Rasmus Stolberg, Mads Brauer and Tatu Rönkkö worked in a club in the hotel’s basement, sometimes watched by small crowds, much as PJ Harvey was during the making of The Hope Six Demolition Project at London’s Somerset House.
They reassembled at another hotel in Copenhagen before embarking upon tours of North America, South America, and Europe. Even then, they’d reconvene between trips to continue work, first in the less glamorous surroundings of a music conservatory in Viseu, Portugal, in July 2016, then, finally, in August, at Berlin’s Michelberger Hotel. By the time they gathered in Mankku Studios in Porvoo – again in the Finnish countryside – Liima were more than ready to begin recording with Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor as co-producer.
1982 finds Liima – musically and lyrically – exploring themes that shaped their youth while looking forward to a future in times that feel as uncertain as they ever might have been, and in which we all struggle to find our identity. ‘Finding values of life, giving up on values of life… Our civilisation, our way of life and our liberal thinking is threatened and challenged,’” Clausen muses. ‘I say our time, but could it be MY time, MY age. Was it like that for my father when he was 35 years old? I’m wondering, I guess the album is wondering.’
Here, amidst the contemplation and questioning, the band stake their claim firmly to both their new name and their new sound. For a band originally founded upon enthusiastic acts of spontaneity, 1982 represents a huge, sophisticated leap forward. The decision to form Liima may have been as bold and radical as their new sound, but the consequences speak for themselves.
