The Cribs have spoken to NME about their ninth studio album ‘Selling A Vibe’ and new single ‘Summer Seizures’. Check it out below along with new UK tour dates, as well as our full interview with Ryan Jarman.
The Wakefield indie trio are due to release the LP on January 9, 2026 – over five years on from 2020’s acclaimed ‘Night Network’, which NME called “their best album in a decade” in a five-star review.
Ryan Jarman told NME that initial sessions for the record took place in Leeds with Gordon Raphael, who produced The Strokes‘ legendary first album ‘Is This It’ and follow-up ‘Room On Fire’. Although the resulting five tracks “sounded great”, the brothers had already committed to trying something “less comfortable” for their next full-length effort.
They enlisted producer and ex-Chairlift member Patrick Wimberly (Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, Lil Yachty) to fulfil their pop-leaning vision for ‘Selling A Vibe’, having operated largely in the rock realm until now.
Speaking to NME about The Cribs’ sun-kissed, bittersweet anthem ‘Summer Seizures’,
Jarman explained: “From 2021, I’d spent a lot more time at home in New York because I had other things going on. But we’d still get together and do festivals every summer and stuff.
“‘Summer Seizures’ just kind of came out; we were just like messing around with stuff. That was the first sign of, ‘I guess we’re gonna start writing a record now’. Because unless we write something that we think is considerably better than the record previous, it’s not something that would get us excited or make us start work.”
He added: “All the significant events in my life had taken place in summer, and I could feel it coming around again.”
The half-decade since ‘Night Network’ gave the Jarmans the chance to regroup and reassess their brotherhood, after living overseas and on different US coasts from one another. ‘Selling A Vibe’ is firmly “rooted in family”, emerging from a tumultuous period for The Cribs – both personally and professionally.
“It was 2023 or something,” Jarman continued. “[‘Summer Seizures’] was a good way of marking time, making me look back on some of the really good times and some of the absolutely terrible times, and just trying to make sense of it all. So that’s where the lyrics came from.”
Read NME‘s full interview with Jarman below, where he also told us about working with Wimberley, his “significant” trip away with twin brother Gary, recent 20th anniversary shows, the “clarity” that comes with taking a break, and why The Cribs don’t have “anything left to prove”.
NME: Hi, Ryan. It’s been five years since the last Cribs album. Why did it take so long?
Ryan Jarman: “In the past, we’d go from putting a record out, and then touring it for like 18 months to two years. And then getting straight back into the rehearsal room and writing, and focusing on the next record. It was just like a treadmill. We just never got off it, from 2004 when we first got signed. It was just that same routine forever, basically.”
“Now, we only write a record or put something out when we feel like it. It’s starting to take longer and longer. There’s no point in us coming off the road and immediately going into a rehearsal room and trying to write. Because I just don’t think you’re gonna get good results.”
You worked with Chairlift’s Patrick Wimberley. How did this come about?
“If we were gonna make another record, we wanted to go… I would say outside our comfort zone. It’s not necessarily outside our comfort zone, but we’ve worked with predominantly rock producers. We’d exhausted our list of who we thought were these really great rock producers.
“We always used to do stuff live in the room and do things quickly. We wanted to try working with someone who worked more in the modern paradigm, or who specifically worked with more pop kind of people. The main thing that [Wimberley] generally works with is like Lil Yachty and stuff. So he’s kind of in the rap world.
“We really liked the idea of working with someone who challenges and takes us outside our normal working environment. It was something we hadn’t done before. It’s like, ‘How are we going to add to our catalogue at this point?’ We really wanted to commit to trying to work with someone that was outside our world. We need to do stuff like that to keep us engaged and keep us fresh, you know? So it was a conscious decision.”
What did he bring to the table?
“We’ve always had a real pop side to the band, and we love pop music. We always really liked pop melodies and a lot of pop devices, like big hooks and all that stuff. We’ve often – just out of some punk rock guilt – buried it. We focused more on the noisier side. So when we worked with Patrick, we felt like we had a good set of pop songs.
“We wanted to work with him so he could work on bringing that out. His production was really good for that. He came up with a lot of things that we wouldn’t have necessarily come up with on our own.
“I just didn’t feel like we had anything left to prove, as far as the indie and punk shit goes. We’ve done eight records of that.”
You recorded ‘Night Network’ at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606. Has he given any further mentorship?
“No, not at all. We haven’t seen Dave since we were in 606. In 2022 we were supposed to do some US dates with the Foo Fighters, but that was unfortunately around the time that Taylor [Hawkins, drummer] died. So we were looking forward to connecting with him then. Everyone’s always off in their own world. It’s not like we all hang out in bars or whatever.”
New song ‘Looking For The Wrong Guy’ sees you rid “a lot of unhealthiness”, and explores a difficult time. What more can you tell us about this track?
“In 2021 or 2022, I’d got up in the night, and for some reason it was just there in my head. It was there with the guitar parts and lyrics. It was one of those things where it came to me complete. I recorded a rough version and then completely forgot about it for a couple of years. I came back to it when we were finishing up some demos for this record.
“I sat on it for ages. I didn’t want to send it to my brothers because I feel like it’s so on the nose. For me, it was a lot less obtuse than what I would normally be, lyrically. I sent it to them literally the day before Gary flew out to the studio. We did it here in New York. They were really into it and receptive to it.”
It’s one of your most emotional, reflective moments…
“Coming out of the fog of the 2000s and stuff and having all that time off, it gives you time to take stock and get your life in order, and focus on the things that really matter: my family, girlfriend, health and happiness. All that stuff gets lost when you’re a full-time musician.
- READ MORE: The Cribs: every album ranked in order of greatness
“Having an extended period away from the band gives you this clarity. I can see us for who we are now. We’re just three working-class guys who happen to be brothers and are in a kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll band. Anything else is just noise. Moving into the future, we’re just in a much better place. We don’t have any distractions, and we can do our best work.”
‘Brothers Won’t Break’ ends things on a hopeful and uplifting note. Was it healing or therapeutic to work through things on this track?
“Yeah. Gary’s my twin brother. We grew up together, we’re completely cut from the same cloth. It’s hard to explain when you’re twins – there’s so much stuff that’s unspoken. You don’t have to, because you’re so aligned – even though we live on two different coasts. But the only time you get to see each other is when you’re touring or in the studio.
“So a couple of years ago, we decided we’d spend the summer together but just not do any writing. No band stuff. I went over to Portland, and there was no pressure. At some point, we wrote ‘Brothers Won’t Break’. [Gary] wrote the lyrics afterwards. It came from hanging out together just as brothers again. I do like that song, I like the sentiment in it.”
Was the trip vital for The Cribs continuing?
“It wasn’t necessarily vital, I just thought it was significant. It was significant for me because there’d never been a time where you felt like you could take your foot off the gas, stop and just relax. It was nice to spend some time together just as brothers, not as bandmates. After 20 years, we’d finally had the opportunity to just do something like that again. I mean, a song did come out of it. So you might argue it’s a busman’s holiday.”
You recently opened for Kaiser Chiefs at their 20th anniversary gig in Leeds. They told us they wanted to “do nostalgia properly” while also looking ahead. Do you share that sentiment?
“I’ve got to be honest, we’d completely forgotten that it was 20 years since ‘The New Fellas’. We were working on this new record, and just completely overlooked it until they offered us that show. We were reticent about doing it. Originally it was like, ‘Fuck that nostalgia stuff’, because we’re gonna have a new record at that point. But it took longer than we expected.
“It’s not necessarily something we would be naturally inclined to do, but we thought if other people were having people remember their records, we wanted people to remember that one also.”
Did you enjoy the experience?
“It was great. That was a really, really fun show. It was weird because some of those songs from ‘The New Fellas’ don’t lend themselves to being played live, like ‘Haunted’. There was a bunch that we hadn’t played live in years. We were like, ‘I just don’t know what this is gonna be like’. It’s such a short record – it was only half an hour long. The event itself just had a really positive feeling. I wouldn’t expect to enjoy anything retrospective, but it was really nice.”
Have you put a full stop on the ‘New Fellas’ shows now? Can fans expect new music at The Shackewell Arms and All Points East?
“Well, we’ve started rehearsing some of the new stuff. Some of it is taking a little bit of figuring out how we’re going to do it. Because we didn’t just record it live, as we normally do. But we’ll definitely be playing ‘Summer Seizures’. I don’t know how many new songs we’ll be doing yet. When I get back to the UK, we’ll be addressing that. We’re going to go straight into rehearsals.
“But it’s definitely the full stop on [‘The New Fellas’] and the start of the next period of the band. There’s no looking backwards from there.”
How is it going back to those tiny stages like The Shackewell? I remember those Wakefield Escobar days…
“I loved that stuff – it was vital to who we were. You’ll remember from Escobar – I loved that communal feeling. But I honestly – at this point, the way that our career progressed – I prefer doing festivals and big outdoor stages. We did all the small shows, and it’s fun to go back and do it. But I think it’s not really who we are. We have geared ourselves more towards big stages. It’d be so reductive to just be like, ‘We like doing those small shows’. It’s just not true anymore.”
You told us in 2020 that guitar music was “back to the underground“, but we’ve since had many new bands topping the albums chart. Your recent reissues hit the top 10 too. Could the “indie sleaze” trend actually be changing the tide?
“Maybe. It just depends if anything is going to congeal. Bands are having a lot of success and killing it, really. But when does it tip over into being a movement? I don’t know if those days are gone, because the internet has made stuff more à la carte. As soon as a few bands started doing well, it changed the culture. Culture seems a lot more fluid these days, as opposed to turning into scenes.
“There’s been at least 15 years of more processed and commercially-oriented music. There must be a hunger out there for an alternative to that. For something raw, basically. I feel like guitar bands have the potential to feel fresh again. It had gone completely stale.”
As brothers who’ve struggled to come back together, did Oasis’ reunion resonate with you at all?
“When we were growing up, we were never big fans of Britpop because we were into Nirvana and all the grunge stuff. So we went on more of a punk tip afterwards. But it’s exciting, isn’t it? I can’t help but feel affected by that. I’m happy for them – purely on that familial level. I’m glad they’ve managed to move past it, and enjoy what they’ve achieved and created together. Seeing footage from the shows is exciting. It seems like it’s really, really affecting people – that’s what rock ‘n’ roll should do.”
The Cribs release ‘Selling A Vibe’ on January 9, 2026. Check out the album tracklist below:
1. ‘Dark Luck’
2. ‘Selling A Vibe’
3. ‘A Point Too Hard To Make’
4. ‘Never The Same’
5. ‘Summer Seizures’
6. ‘Looking For The Wrong Guy’
7. ‘If Our Paths Never Crossed’
8. ‘Self Respect’
9. ‘You’ll Tell Me Anything’
10. ‘Rose Mist’
11. ‘Distractions’
12. ‘Brothers Won’t Break’
Following their summer 2025 dates, the trio will also be heading out on a headline UK tour for Spring 2026. Ticket pre-sale begins 10am on Wednesday August 20, with general sale from 10am on Friday August 22. Check out full dates below and visit here for tickets and more information.
AUGUST 2025
23 – The Shacklewell Arms, London, UK (In Support of War Child)
24 – All Points East, London, UK
SEPTEMBER 2025
19 – Reggies Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA (Riot Fest Late Night)
20 – Riot Festival, Chicago, IL, USA
23 – Lee’s Palace, Toronto, ON, CAN
25 – The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA, USA
27 – Warsaw, Brooklyn, NY, USA
MARCH 2026
18 – Boiler Shop, Newcastle, UK
20 – Foundry, Sheffield, UK
21 – Albert Hall, Manchester, UK
22 – O2 Institute 1, Birmingham, UK
24 – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
25 – Tramshed, Cardiff, UK
28 – Concorde 2, Brighton, UK
The post The Cribs tell us about shedding their “punk rock guilt” on new album ‘Selling A Vibe’: “We’ve always had a real pop side” appeared first on NME.
