Moody Pop Blues And Purifying Introspection – dEUS Back With New Album ‘HOW TO REPLACE IT’

20 February 2023

Belgian art-rock heroes dEUS unleashed their
8th LP, named HOW TO REPLACE IT last Friday.

Pias (record label): “Some bands age gracefully, slipping into something a little more comfortable. Others fade to irrelevance, with nothing left to say. Twenty-eight years after their debut record, dEUS have done neither – they remain indie stalwarts, pushing ever forward, endlessly curious and creatively restless.”

Tom Barman at work – photo by Turn Up The Volume

Tom Barman (frontman/songwriter): “You don’t want to repeat yourself, but
you have your style. You want to try new stuff and just react to whatever feels
fresh at the time.

“I like the openness of the album’s title. Follow the lyrical clues, and you might conclude “it”
concerns romance and ageing; squint a little, and you might alight on modernity being the malaise described. Either way, fueling intrigue is by design. It’s a question, it’s an answer…
it’s up to the listener to decide.”

“I had a pretty dramatic time – very personal, very painful. But ‘How To Replace It’ doesn’t scan as sad or downbeat; it’s quite the opposite. It’s defiant. And has some distance. It’s not just the raw emotion speaking – there’s the hindsight and introspection that comes after all that. And room for forgiveness.”

Full Barman interview here.

TUTV: It’s the best-ever Belgian band’s first longplayer in almost 11 years, not that
they disappeared from the earth as they released a ‘Best Of’ in between and kept playing live, mostly at festivals. How To Replace It is definitely family of 2012 album Following Sea
in tone, timbre, and moodiness.

No fireworks, no killer singles, no classic anthems. For the greater part this
new full-length breaths moody blues pop and purifying introspection musings following Tom Barman‘s heart-piercing relationship breakup and family strife. At this moment – after 3 spins – I’m not really excited, but I know, of course, that dEUS songs – definitely their soft ones – grow slowly until they capture your psyche. So, we’ll see/hear. But I’m optimistic. Their high-quality songwriting is no less than an unquestionable fact.

Singles: 1989 / How To Rpalce It

– 1989 –