The Avalanches are officially entering album number four territory, announcing their new record No Bad Memories will arrive this October – and naturally, they’ve assembled one hell of a guest list for the occasion.
The Australian sample wizards will release the follow-up to 2020’s We Will Always Love You on Friday, 16th October, with collaborators across the record including Karen O, Jamie xx, Portraits of Tracy, Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss.
The Avalanches – ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ ft. Portraits Of Tracy
And behind that stacked collection of names is a pretty fascinating concept.
No Bad Memories explores the strangely powerful relationship between nostalgia, memory and consumerism – specifically, the way advertising, commercial jingles, technological sounds and audio logos can become tangled up with our most precious childhood memories.
In other words: how much of that warm fuzzy feeling in the back of your brain actually belongs to you, and how much was painstakingly engineered by a marketing department?
“It’s been interesting as adults to reflect on this often stunning period of marketing – the creativity, filmmaking, photography and music – but which was also, you know, selling a completely unobtainable dream,” The Avalanches explain.
“The way we value devices and products; the way we reflect and represent ‘a life lived’; the wonder of memory and deep power of nostalgia, especially in sound. Revisiting imagery and jingles from childhood and realizing how profoundly they have stuck…”
The trio ultimately began taking sounds from within that corporate machinery and doing what The Avalanches do best: chopping them up and transforming them into something entirely new.
“Taking these sound sources from within the heart of this kinda corporate framework and flipping the fragments into our own kind of joyous pop music… eventually we arrived at this world of No Bad Memories.”
Arriving alongside the album announcement is its fourth single, ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’, featuring self-taught Louisiana producer and multi-instrumentalist Portraits of Tracy.
The track pairs driving garage-rock drums with the dreamy samples and euphoric melodies synonymous with The Avalanches, topped off by Portraits of Tracy’s vocals.
And it sounds like the collaboration has blossomed into a pretty special creative relationship.
“Tracy is an hilarious, brave and tender human being who Tony and I have become very close to over the years we’ve been making music together,” Robbie Chater says.
“Almost weekly another song arrives… ‘I made something new… what do you guys think!?’ And they’re always SO good. Every single song!”
Chater goes on to hail Portraits of Tracy as “truly a generational talent”, adding: “We feel very fortunate to make music together.”
Portraits of Tracy says the feeling was mutual.
“Working with The Avalanches was such an awesome experience!” she says. “I don’t find myself collaborating too often with peeps, but as soon as we connected it felt just right.”
The pair began working on the song in 2024 before re-recording and completing it the following year.
‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ follows three previously released tastes of No Bad Memories, each revealing another heavyweight collaborator.
‘Blue Shadows’ features Yeah Yeah Yeahs icon Karen O, while ‘Every Single Weekend’ sees The Avalanches link up with Jamie xx. Meanwhile, the glitchy ‘Together’ features Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss.
No Bad Memories marks The Avalanches’ fourth studio album, following their enormously influential 2000 debut Since I Left You, 2016’s Wildflower and 2020’s We Will Always Love You.
The group – currently comprising Robbie Chater, Tony Di Blasi and Andy Szekeres – have also remained busy internationally, recently performing at Primavera Sound Barcelona and playing their first-ever live show in Mexico, with headline dates in New York and London still to come.
Their last major release appearance came courtesy of Jamie xx’s 2024 album In Waves, collaborating on the track ‘All You Children’.
The Avalanches’ No Bad Memories is due out Friday, 16th October and you an pre-order it here.
For now, you can wrap your nostalgia receptors around new single ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ up above.
Further Reading
triple j’s Hottest 100 Of Australian Songs: The Complete List
Listen to ‘Since I Left You’-Era Song From Ex-Avalanches Member Gordon “Gordy” McQuilten
