Song You Need: Let The Necks seep into your soul

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

Over the course of 35 years and 18 studio albums, The Necks have slowly let us into their bizarre, wonderful realm. Pianist Chris Abrahams, drummer Tony Buck, and bassist Lloyd Swanton are brilliant sound crafters and masterful musicians. More importantly, though, the insatiable curiosity that brought the Australian avant-jazz trio together in 1987, and has since produced some of the most captivating improvised live performances on record, has persevered through all that time and music, holding them together like fly paper.

“Imprinting,” the lead single from their newly announced four-track double LP Travel, takes a softer, more tentative approach than the songs on their most recent record (2020’s Three), but it exists in continuum with the rest of their catalog — vibrating at a different frequency but rooted in the same creative soil. A 17-minute saga that progresses at its own pace, the piece finds Swanton’s bass and Abrahams’ keys plodding forward like beasts of burden, escaped from the yoke of their metronomic master but still dragging the rattling chains of Buck’s drumscape behind them.

Due out February 24 via Northern Spy, Travel will give each of its tracks a full side of vinyl. This may seem a daunting proposition for the unacquainted listener, but it shouldn’t be: The Necks ease you into their music a millimeter at a time, gradually immersing you in a sea of sound so singular it seeps into your soul and sits there, a salve for whatever ails you.