Algernon Cadwallader have announced their first new album in 14 years. The influential emo band will release Trying Not to Have a Thought on September 12 via Saddle Creek. Algernon Cadwallader have also shared the new single “Hawk,” with a music video that was directed by Darby Irrgang and Ricky Christian. Plus, they’ve announced a headlining tour. Check out the new video and tour dates below.
Trying Not to Have a Thought is Algernon Cadwallader’s third album and their first since reuniting in 2022. It follows their 2008 debut, Some Kind of Cadwallader, long considered an emo classic, and 2011’s Parrot Flies. The new LP also functions as a return to form in the shape of their lineup, as it features original members singer-bassist Peter Helmis, guitarists Joe Reinhart and Colin Mahony, and drummer Nick Tazza. The album was largely recorded and self-produced at Reinhart’s own Headroom Studios in Philadelphia.
In a new interview with Ian Cohen for Pitchfork, Helmis elaborated on the album’s title and lyrical themes: “Us being a band again and having an audience, knowing that people are listening and also seeing all these super young kids on the reunion tour, we’re speaking to another generation here,” he said. “There’s obviously a few songs that were about the current world we live in—America, the empire. I didn’t want to premeditate it, this is what’s going on in my mind and probably everybody’s mind these days. It’s just overwhelming, which is where the title of the record comes from; ‘Trying not to have a thought’ is a euphemism for, like, meditation and trying to free the mind. But this is all the stuff that’s rushing in all the time.”
Algernon Cadwallader will bring their headlining tour to North America in the autumn. Beginning on November 6, the band will perform across the United States and Canada, stopping in cities like Seattle, Chicago, Montreal, Philadelphia, New York, Denver, and Atlanta. The tour is set to conclude on December 15 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In a 2012 blog post, Algernon Cadwallader wrote that the band was “laid to rest” and focused on other projects moving forward, including Hop Along for Reinhart. In 2018, Lauren Records reissued the group’s two albums on vinyl. After reuniting in 2022, Algernon Cadwallader went on a reunion tour. Since then, the band has played at music festivals such as Best Friends Forever and opened Joyce Manor’s Never Hungover Again anniversary tour.
