Balance and Composure with Cushing

with you in spirit, the fourth Balance and Composure LP, is an arresting, atmospheric collection of melodic post-punk and towering rock. Released in 2024 on long-time collaborator and Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip’s Memory Music, it’s the band’s first LP in eight years, and a thrilling full-length comeback after their four-year hiatus. It thunders and stirs, dipping between beautiful, crystalline arrangements and punishing, earth-shaking climaxes; in between all, a gripping, near-physical tension crackles and growls and grooves, waiting to rip open.

It’s an intensely self-reflective record for vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, an uprooting and examination of the supports on which a life is built. Preemptive grief, wrestling with god and faith, familial responsibility, familial mortality—these are the things Simmons was carrying while writing this material. They’re also things he was trying, for better and worse, to avoid—hence the record’s title.

with you in spirit feels like the work of songwriters reaching new heights, exploring new depths. Sometimes, the record itself feels like a band grappling with its own avoidance, its own mortality, and deciding to face these things the only way they know how. Balance and Composure are with us in spirit, yes, but in the flesh, too, for now.

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Cushing is a noise-rock three piece from Portland, ME. Founded in 2014 by long time friends guitarist Serge Vladimiroff and drummer Ric Loyd, the band quickly recruited local bass stalwart Sean Hadley (Conifer). They name the new project Cushing, partly after the late actor Peter Cushing and partly after the island of the same name off the Portland coast. The trio shared a mutual love of indie rock, post-punk, slowcore and krautrock and managed to hash everything together into a unique and cohesive sound. In 2015 Cushing recorded a six song EP Sounds of Cushing with indie alchemist Noah DeFillipis (Purse).

In 2016 Hadley was replaced by Evan Coffey, a recent transplant from North Carolina by way of Alaska. The new line up went into the studio with Todd Hutchisen at Acadia Recording Company and released a new CD EP Curse of Cushing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBPrBtLMXc&list=RDvgBPrBtLMXc&start_radio=1