Maribou State have announced a hiatus, saying that they want to take some time out “to reset physically and mentally”.
The move comes as the band took a temporary break in 2024, and will now see them have a longer hiatus before deciding what comes next.
They will still play their scheduled shows this summer, including a stop at Forwards Festival in Bristol on Saturday (August 29) and at London’s LIDO Festival on Bank Holiday Monday (August 31).
They shared the update about their future in a new interview with MixMag, where they reflected on the recent release of a deluxe edition of ‘Hallucinating Love’, and also shed light on how they overcame health worries and writer’s block to finish that album.
“After 18 months of touring this record, and everything that led up to it, it feels like the right moment to actually stop rather than push straight into the next cycle like we always have before,” Liam Ivory shared. “From my perspective, this record came from a place of health struggles, so it would be a bit hypocritical to finish an album about resilience and then immediately burn myself out again.
“I want proper time to reset physically and mentally, and to build a life that isn’t entirely dictated by a touring schedule. It’s less about stepping away from music, and more about making sure whatever comes next isn’t built on the same unsustainable pace.”
Discussing how it was around the time they were working on ‘Hallucinating Love’ that they considered taking a break, they shared that it was “brutal timing” to finish their 2019 tour and go “straight into lockdown”.
“We’d been running on no sleep, not really looking after ourselves, then suddenly we were grounded with nothing to distract from it. That’s when things caught up with me personally,” Ivory shared. “My anxiety spiked hard, it turned into a constant health anxiety, and underneath it was a real lack of purpose and malaise.”
He continued: “Chris [Davids] was dealing with his own version of it, although physically as well as mentally, and for a long stretch we were both struggling but in completely different ways. It wasn’t easy to write music from that place and sessions often felt like wading through mud.”
As for how they want fans to see their LIDO show – their last gig before the hiatus – they told the outlet: “We want it to feel less like an ending and more like a marker, a chance to give this album and this whole period the send-off it deserves before we properly step back.”
“Playing a hometown headline show at the end of it all, with people who’ve been on this journey with the record, feels like the most fitting way to put it to bed,” they added.
“We’re also super excited to be playing the final show with our full orchestra and a big production. We’ve only done this max version of the show a few times before so it feels extra special to close out with the best version of the live show.”
When it dropped last year, NME gave their third album, ‘Hallucinating Love’, a four star review, which read: “Already certified masters of their craft, ‘Hallucinating Love’ cherry-picks fresh blooms and euphoric alt-pop melodies to enhance what we already know and love about Maribou State.”
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