WIRED by Basement

WIRED is a hard reset for Basement. It marks the British band’s first album in eight years, a reunion with their original label Run For Cover Records, and a return to making music with the unbridled passion and creative intuition that's always animated their best material. Since forming in 2009, Basement have always been the same five friends -- vocalist Andrew Fisher, guitarists Alex Henery and Ronan Crix, bassist Duncan Stewart, and drummer James Fisher -- with the same alchemic bond. The only thing that's changed in recent years is their renewed sense of purpose, and their new album makes that loudly apparent. WIRED is the most dynamic, daring, and inspired Basement have ever sounded, while also retaining the timeless fundamentals of the band’s singular sound: growling guitars, rousing choruses, striking emotional verbiage.

“I never thought Basement could sound like this,” Henery says. “But in my head, it’s what I’ve always wanted Basement to sound like.”

Every time Basement take a break, their band gets bigger. “Dude, it’s so weird,” Fisher says with a chuckle of disbelief. “I’m knocking on all the wood because I don’t understand how it keeps working.” The quintet’s 2011 debut, I Wish You Could Stay Here, gave them a foothold in the post-hardcore groundswell of the early 2010s, but Basement had already decided to call it quits before their far more evolved follow-up, Colourmeinkindness, had even hit the shelves. Upon disbanding in late 2012 so vocalist Fisher could get his teaching degree, Basement’s underground following ballooned in their absence, and when they eventually reformed in 2014, they were welcomed back as mainstays of the scene.

Basement charged forward with two more LPs, 2016’s snappier Promise Everything and 2018’s sleeker Beside Myself, but after the latter record, which was released on a major label, Basement knew they needed to take a year off to recalibrate. “We were all left with a really weird, sour taste in our mouth after signing to a major label and having all these people control things,” Fisher admits. During their COVID-era hiatus, each member questioned whether the band should even continue as they spent time pursuing their own creative outlets. It was a period of serious existential reflection for the guys in Basement, and at one point, Henery considered stepping away from the band altogether before Fisher intervened, knowing that everyone in Basement needed the band to persevere. ”Alex saying that he was ready to cut the cord was what I needed to be like ‘Nope, we cannot do that,’” Fisher says.

After some deep conversations that reaffirmed their creative alliance, Henery and Fisher reconvened to begin writing again with no label pressures and no strings attached. Instantly, the seeds of WIRED began to take shape, and soon enough, the whole band knew they had something special in the works. Coincidentally, not long after Basement began properly sculpting LP5, the Colourmeinkindness song “Covet” caught wind on TikTok and swiftly became a viral hit, earning a Gold certification in 2024 -- 12 years after its release -- and introducing Basement’s music to a whole new generation of internet-savvy fans. Once again, Basement find themselves re-emerging with new music bigger and more beloved than ever before.

“I just don’t know if things would’ve happened how they did if we didn’t do that 2012 break,” Fisher muses. “And I know for a fact that WIRED wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had the experience we had with the last record and the early 2020s break.”

Basement are back firing on all cylinders, but they're not interested in rehashing old glories. The whole band was adamant that WIRED had to be their most decisive artistic statement yet. A bold musical swing that people will either love or hate, but that absolutely can’t elicit a muted reaction from their fans. The group spent years writing and refining these 12 no-bloat songs, working closer and communicating better than ever while building out the tracklist as a group in various studios long before they began recording. Therefore, the songs were fully-formed by the time they hit the studio with powerhouse producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Mannequin Pussy) , who helped the band manifest the heightened version of Basement that they’d always dreamt of. Imperfections were celebrated, each member’s ideas were incorporated, and Congleton ensured that every moment on WIRED sounds both precise and enervated.

“We wanted it to just be nothing like the last record,” Fisher stresses, emphasizing that Congleton’s lively, unpolished production style served their vision perfectly. “John would do things and I would laugh because they sounded so good.”

Lead singles “WIRED” and “Broken By Design” are a terrific showcase of WIRED’s dynamic breadth. The title-track is the most urgent they’ve ever sounded, a surefire live staple propelled by needling guitars, a slugging drumbeat, and a skyscraping hook that finds Fisher’s voice in peak form. “Broken By Design” has the opposite temperament: dusky, delicate, bass-led, but still quintessentially Basement in its immediate catchiness and moody character. Nothing on WIRED sounds stagnant. Not one part feels undercooked. The band looked to a smorgasbord of adventurous heroes for inspiration (REM, Interpol, Smashing Pumpkins, to name a few) without ever sounding like they’re imitating any one band -- not even themselves.

“We’ve done Colourmeinkindness, we’ve done Promise Everything,” Henery explains. “Yes, we’re Basement, but what’s the point in doing another record if we’re not going to try and push it?”

WIRED is a hardy push in every regard. A song like the dubby, deliriously hooky “Head Alight” was completely re-worked in the studio during a bout of try-anything experimentation, and that type of all-hands-on-deck collaboration bred some of the record’s most exciting ideas. Meanwhile, Fisher really challenged himself to sing in different registers and relish in happy accidents. “I wanted it to sound real and powerful -- not soft and square.” That fixation on strength also carried over into WIRED’s lyrics, in which the band encouraged their vocalist to avoid the despondent subject matter of prior Basement albums and lean into a more self-assured version of himself.

“A lot of WIRED is about me trying to work out and find confidence, and being at peace with being confident publicly,” Fisher reveals. “Because I’ve never done that, and certainly never with the music, which has always been very self-deprecating, insular, and sad.”

That’s not to say WIRED is a happy record. Rather, it grapples with all the personal and band-related tribulations that Basement have endured over the last eight years, and uses those experiences to galvanize a set of songs that are both courageous and tender, vulnerable and vigorous. “We’ve pushed through the craziest lows and the ultimate highs and we’re still going,” Henery enthuses. “To me, WIRED represents a lot.”

The record’s title condenses all of those facets into a single word. The textural connotations of WIRED -- metallic, sharp, jagged -- evoke the album’s steely sonics, and on a more conceptual level, the title speaks to Basement’s unshakeable tenacity. An analog band who’ve thrived in an increasingly digital world without resting on the comforts of nostalgia. Five friends who’ve persisted through several breakups and breakthroughs, but have only grown as people and evolved as a musical unit. At this point, Basement have to accept their fate: they're WIRED for this shit.

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