The Cab have been away for nearly fifteen years, but if the build-up to Chasing Crowns is anything to go by, the wait has been worth every second. ‘Sweet Kerosene’ — the band’s latest single and the final teaser before their new album drops April 24 — is exactly the kind of song that reminds you why this band built the following they did in the first place. Alex DeLeon’s vocals are as smooth and soaring as ever, the musicianship is tight and assured, and the whole thing has the cinematic quality the band describes so well.
“This one has always felt like a movie,” the band say of the track. “There are just some songs where the script just writes itself and the imagery just paints itself.” The lyrical premise is as romantically self-destructive as the title suggests — sometimes it’s better to let someone burn you to the ground than to never have felt the heat of their flames at all. It’s the kind of line that sounds like it belongs on a movie trailer, which is presumably entirely the point.
Chasing Crowns is The Cab’s first full-length album since Symphony Soldier in 2011 — a record that debuted in the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 and gave the world ‘Angel With a Shotgun’, which has since accumulated over 260 million streams and experienced a remarkable resurgence across short-form platforms, introducing the band to an entirely new generation of listeners. The new album, written over the past decade, is inspired by the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi — the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, treating the cracks as part of the story rather than something to hide. Eighteen tracks, produced with the kind of ambition that comes from a band who spent years figuring out exactly what they wanted to say.
The band have also announced The Back From The Dead Tour, their first headline US run in over a decade, kicking off May 22. A second New York City date has already been added after the first sold out — which, alongside sold-out shows across Southeast Asia and performances at Red Rocks and the When We Were Young Festival, suggests the appetite for The Cab’s return is very real indeed.
Chasing Crowns is out April 24.
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