There are certain albums that become almost impossible for a band to escape. For Movements, that album is Feel Something..
Released in 2017, their debut has remained the record that everything since has inevitably been measured against. Nearly nine years and two albums later, Movements are preparing to release Happier Now on September 4th, and the build towards album number four is starting to raise a familiar question.
Could this finally be the Movements record that stands alongside it?
There is certainly something happening around the singles. “Dissolve Me” and “Back in My Ways” started the rollout, followed by “Everything Is Fine”, “Separate” and most recently “Live By The Sword”, with the response to the new material remaining noticeably positive. Rock Sound described the latest single as having “a little bit of everything” that makes Movements work and suggested it was another sign that something special could be coming.
Fans have been having a similar conversation. There has been plenty of excitement around hearing some of the angst and atmosphere associated with earlier Movements again, but what makes Happier Now interesting is that the band haven’t simply gone backwards to achieve it.
That was apparently the intention from the beginning. Patrick Miranda says the band wanted to take elements of their early sound and blend them with the direction explored on 2023’s RUCKUS!. Happier Now was never designed as Feel Something 2. Instead, Movements appear to have taken the different versions of themselves from the last decade and worked out how they can exist on the same record.
Will Yip is a significant part of that. The producer behind Feel Something reunited with the band for Happier Now, which was recorded across three separate month long sessions at Studio 4 in Pennsylvania. It was the most time Movements have ever had to make an album, rather than fitting the process around touring.
Miranda has described Yip as essentially a fifth member of Movements, someone who understands the band’s sound well enough to help tie those different sides together. Five singles in, that approach appears to be connecting.
Even the album’s title is slightly deceptive. Miranda has described Happier Now as an extremely personal and surprisingly dark record, admitting that writing it made him realise he perhaps wasn’t doing as well as he thought. The title itself, he says, is deliberately tongue in cheek.
None of this means Movements have made another Feel Something, and perhaps that is the wrong expectation anyway. That record has had nearly nine years to become what it is to fans.
What Happier Now does have is a seriously promising run of singles, Will Yip back behind the desk and a band deliberately bringing the strongest parts of their past into everything they have become since.
If that carries across the full record, Feel Something might finally have some competition..