It’s been almost 20 years since the release of Armor For Sleep’s seminal full-length, What To Do When You Are Dead, but the album still resonates with much of the band’s fanbase. Today, for the first time in 15 years, the band released new music and it is sure to ignite the same passion from fans that made the band’s Equal Vision debut so important to them. “How Far Apart” is an evocative anthem sure to leave fans feeling it in the pit of their stomach as lead singer, Ben Jorgensen, belts “you used to be my home, I found you in my bones” in the track’s immediately addictive chorus. “How Far Apart” is full of the emotive, hard-hitting drums and reverb-soaked guitars that were so pivotal to the success of What To Do When You Are Dead, but with the maturity one would expect from an artist of Jorgensen’s caliber after years refining his craft. It serves as a perfect introduction to what fans can expect on the band’s upcoming full-length, The Rain Museum, due out on Equal Vision Records this fall.
For the official video, which debuted alongside the song, Armor For Sleep tapped director Jesse Korman (Hot Water Music, The Juliana Theory). The collaboration yielded an emotionally-gripping tale of a life lived in reverse. The visual is cinematically beautiful and complex, matching the intensity of the track in lock-step. The band has always been celebrated for the cohesiveness of their releases – from narrative to artwork to videos – and this visual once again lives up to that high standard of cohesiveness and creativity. You can watch the official video now on YouTube or listen to it on any of your favorite streaming platforms.
Quote from lead singer, Ben Jorgensen:
We are very excited to share our new album, “The Rain Museum” with everyone. Back in 2020, at the start of the pandemic and at the start of our collective lockdown, I made it my mission to finish writing a concept album that I had the idea for for many years but was never able to bring to life. “The Rain Museum” was initially a short story I wrote many years ago about a post-apocalyptic Earth and a mysterious museum in the middle of the desert. Weaving the story into an album was going to be my quarantine project. Unfortunately, my marriage of nearly eight years and basically my entire life fell apart as I was beginning the writing process. The one thing I had in my life to divert my attention from what I was going through was the creative process of writing that album… so I decided to push through and keep working on the record…but something weird happened. Because I couldn’t ignore what I was going through personally, I wound up writing myself and what I was going through into the story of the album and into the world I had been creating for this concept record. In the end, it’s an album about facing some of the most painful parts of being human and how lost we can get. I just hope it will speak to people going through their own dark times, as my favorite art certainly helped me get through mine.
“How Far Apart” is the first single from The Rain Museum, the band’s upcoming full-length that is 17 years in the making. It’s a concept album built around a post-apocalyptic world where weather no longer exists on planet earth and people come to a mysterious museum in the middle of the desert to look back on what life used to be like. Originally planned as the follow up to What to Do When You Are Dead, the album had been shelved due to “bad advice” leading the band in another direction. Fast forward to the global pandemic of 2020, and the events of the real world encouraged Jorgensen to revisit the concept. Concurrently, his marriage of eight years began to fall apart, leaving Jorgensen to further infuse the science-fiction story with elements of his real life. The result is a beautiful and devastating 12 song collection that draws upon the best elements of Armor For Sleep’s catalog while incorporating elevated songwriting and composition. After a fifteen year absence from the studio, The Rain Museum will undoubtedly prove to be well-worth the wait for old and new fans alike. You can https://afs.lnk.to/rainmuseum.
Tracklisting:
1. The Rain Museum
2. How Far Apart
3. See You On The Other Side
4. World Burn Down
5. In This Nightmare Together
6. New Rainbows
7. I’m Not Myself
8. Whatever Who Cares
9. Rather Drown
10. A Teardrop On The Surface Of The Sun
11. Tomorrow Faded Away
12. Spinning Through Time
In anticipation of The Rain Museum, Armor For Sleep will be joining Dashboard Confessional and Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness on the “Hello Gone Days” tour this summer. They will also be performing at When We Were Young Fest in October, joining a stacked line-up of influential artists from the scene that Armor For Sleep emerged from. Tickets for all dates are available now at armorforsleep.com.
Tour Dates:
7/31 – The Fillmore (Minneapolis, MN)
8/1 – The Village Theatre (Davenport, IA) * Headlining Show
8/2 – St. Louis Music Park (Maryland Heights, MO)
8/4 – Rock The Ruins (Indianapolis, IN)
8/5 – Agora Theater & Ballroom (Cleveland, OH)8/6 – The Andrew J Brady Music Center (Cincinnati, OH)
8/8 – Kemba Live! (Columbus, OH)
8/9 – Beak & Skiff Apple Orchards (Lafayette, NY)
8/10 – Toyota Oakdale Theatre (Wallingford, CT)
8/12 – The Rooftop At Pier 17 (New York, NY)
8/13 – Stone Pony Summer Stage (Asbury Park, NJ)
8/14 – Skyline Stage At The Mann (Philadelphia, PA)
10/22 – 10/23, 10/29 – When We Were Young Fest (Las Vegas, NV)