Terrible Sons release new album ‘The Raft Is Not The Shore’

Today, Terrible Sons release The Raft Is Not The Shore, the much-anticipated debut album from indie folk husband-and-wife duo of Lauren (LA Mitchell, Fly My Pretties) and Matt Barus (Dukes). Coinciding with the release is a video for the opening track Birdsong taken from the new album. To celebrate the release, the band will play an intimate album release show at Loons, Lyttelton on May 13th. Tickets can be purchased via Undertheradar.co.nz .

Deeply rooted in their local community in Ōtautahi/ Christchurch, Terrible Sons have quietly and consistently been releasing music online for seven years, with early singles clocking up over 18 million streams. Their debut album, The Raft Is Not the Shore, was recorded over a couple of years in their backyard home studio, with producer Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams) and long term friends and collaborators, including Tom Healy on guitar, Jo Barus (Sir Dave Dobbyn) on bass, Joe McCallum (The Veils) on drums and Cameron Pearce on horns, with strings by London’s Urban Soul Orchestra and an impromptu choir from their children’s local primary school.

The stunning visuals for Birdsong were directed by Charlotte Evans (Aldous Harding, Nadia Reid, BENEE) and shot on 16mm film by cinematographer Ezra Simons (Earth Tongue). Matt explained the background to the video: “Birdsong is a tale of a journey. It dips into Koukourarata, Port Levy, which is over the hill from where we spend a lot of time in Banks Peninsula. [Director] Charlotte Evans sent us this beautiful concept based around these images of stark figures in a harsh, windswept landscape with billowing, Victorian costumes. The day we shot the video was an exceptionally hot summer’s day and I was stomping over these grassy hills. Ezra captured these beautiful, contrasted and vast landscapes with me as a solitary figure burdened with something unspoken and elusive.”

Stream / Purchase The Raft Is Not The Shore Album

Terrible Sons is the moniker for husband/wife duo Matthew Barus (Dukes) and Lauren Barus (L.A. Mitchell, Fly My Pretties), who work and live with their two children in an intentional community near Christchurch. Having clocked up over 18 million streams on previous singles since 2018, the quietly accomplished band is signed to Nettwerk. The band’s string of sparse, yet intimate modern folk EP releases include their most recent, and much-lauded third EP Mass.