When you catch Ceremony live, they carry you along on a ride. By now, Ceremony has become a punk institution, though that label can imply a certain staying power that they actively resist. The band persists in altering itself. Founded in 2004, its members were all teenagers, most still in high school when they wrote and cut the 72-second blast of disdain that becomes the canonical hardcore touchstone “Kersed.” On stage, Ceremony still curses through “Kersed” and the quick, brutal, anarchic numbers they laid down in their early days, songs that could transform a crowded venue into a feverish cyclone of swinging arms. Yet they also pull out newer material—snappy, throbbing post-punk textures that remind you they picked their name from a New Order tune in the first place.
Powerviolence outfits rarely drift toward new wave, and new wave acts seldom dive into powerviolence. Ceremony occupies both camps, and yet neither, in a sense. It’s not unusual to see former hardcore kids explore different avenues and genres, but it’s less common for them to keep doing so within the same project that started during childhood. Ceremony’s lineup has remained stable since 2011, when former Paint It Black guitarist Andy Nelson joined. They stand out for sticking together and for not repudiating their younger selves, a cohesion that enables a live show to flip from explosive singalongs to icy, mood-driven excursions—and back again. It’s also how you get an album like Tell Me Your Dream.
The people in Ceremony aren’t the same as the ones who began the band more than two decades ago. They’ve grown into adults, many now based in Los Angeles after originating in Rohnert Park, the Bay Area suburb that lent its name to their 2010 masterwork. They pursue other interests and projects, too. Since the release of the last Ceremony record, 2019’s In The Spirit World, singer Ross Farrar has issued three solo LPs, while guitarist Anthony Anzaldo has released two, including a full-length homage to Prince’s Dirty Mind. Farrar and drummer Jake Casarotti have collaborated with their other outfit Spice, delivering several outstanding records of clanging, Dischord-style post-hardcore. And Ceremony themselves have reflected a touch of retrospection. They marked the 14th anniversary of Rohnert Park by performing the album in its entirety for a one-night engagement at the Hollywood Palladium, an event that sold out and looked spectacular. A live-recorded version of that show appeared a few months later.
Tell Me Your Dream, the first new Ceremony album in seven years, captures the band surveying its own history and reinterpreting it anew. In some respects, it mirrors the tension of the band’s live performances—fiery, chant-like punk anthems that share space with experimental forays that occasionally take on their own epic quality. Even as the album never eases up, every track feels unmistakably like Ceremony—an entity capable of urgency and abstraction at once. Some of the harsher numbers incorporate surprising touches, such as the new-wave synth wobble that threads through the otherwise feral “Other Hells.” And a few off-kilter tracks—like the spider-webby, funky “Madness,” which sits right after “Other Hells” and evokes something akin to !!!-style call-and-response dance-punk—continue to burn with feverish intensity.
Even though the last Ceremony LP came out a few years and a handful of side projects ago, the band never stopped performing, and the vitality of their shows remains evident on Tell Me Your Dream. The record also marks a reunion with a long-time collaborator who predates the band’s own evolution: John Reis, known for his work with Pitchfork (the band, not the website), Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes, and an array of other projects. Reis contributed additional guitar to the Devo-cued assault Tell Me Your Dream’s screamer “Deep Down Where I Belong,” and he provides backing vocals throughout, joined by Jasmine Watson, bassist of Tørsö and a former Ceremony tour member. It’s tempting to think Reis injects some rock-’n’-roll swagger into a number such as the yearning, bittersweet groove “Dark Summer.”
When he isn’t singing with Ceremony or his other projects, Ross Farrar is also a noted poet who pursued post-graduate study at Syracuse University, which means he once taught in the same English department as George Saunders. (I studied English there myself, but years ago, and our paths never crossed.) On Tell Me Your Dream, Farrar isn’t primarily writing the ultra-direct lines that once felt certain to be tattoo-worthy. Instead, his words feel more introspective and occasionally opaque. A track like “Madness” can be dense with cultural references that require a moment of research, yet it often culminates in a revealing insight such as the line, “Being young’s like being rich/ You have this thing that everyone wants, and you couldn’t care less… And you waste it.” Later, on the austere art-pop number “10 Planets,” Farrar declares, “When everything is lost, you’re gonna find that you can’t eat that money.” So perhaps that one would deserve a tattoo after all.
Across Ceremony’s arc, Tell Me Your Dream leans more toward the indie-rock side of their spectrum than the all-out hardcore onslaughts of their earliest years. Yet, more than ever, it feels like the band is in contact with every phase of its existence, including ones that haven’t yet arrived. When Ceremony ventures into unfamiliar directions, it doesn’t sound like they’re chasing a stylistic pastiche or trying to stave off boredom. Rather, the album stands as another chapter in their ongoing pursuit of expression. Ceremony keeps exploring, and their fearless persistence feels increasingly miraculous as the years pass.
If Tell Me Your Dream were to be Ceremony’s final record, it would be a fitting exit. If you’re new to Ceremony, it’s an excellent starting point, though you’ll probably want to circle back to Rohnert Park next. Perhaps the strongest approach is to hear the album as one more thread in the long, beautiful tapestry they’ve been weaving for decades. Their discography converses with itself, and a release this potent, this late in the game, enriches that dialogue even more.
Tell Me Your Dream lands on 8/7 via Relapse.
Other albums of note released this week:
• Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s Cannonball
• The Mountain Goats’ Days
• FLO’s Therapy At The Club
• Ravyn Lenae’s Blue Island
• Public Opinion’s The Curse Of Public Opinion
• Citizen’s Halcyon Blues
• Overmono’s Pure Devotion
• Hana Stretton’s tiarn
• Margaret Glaspy’s I Am Both
• DMA’S’ DMA’S
• Inspectah Deck’s Dragon’s Breath
• John Carpenter’s Cathedral
• Karol G’s No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto
• Slow Fiction’s dollhouse
• God Of War’s Molly Picture
• Electric Callboy’s TANZNEID
• Coupdekat’s Goodbye 2012!
• Really Good Time’s Affirmations
• The Lampreys’ Masquerade
• Megasound’s Megasound
• Why Bother?’s Beyond Step One
• Art Feynman’s Orphans
• Hulder’s Verbolgen
• Cimarron 615’s Same Sky
• Stay Out’s Broken Homes
• Martha Skye Murphy & Roy Montgomery’s Nebular
• The Iron Roses’ Molotov Nights
• Marlon Hoffstadt’s Das Ist Daddy
• Nezza’s Sweat
• Derez De’Shon’s I’m Not OK But…
• Bull Thieves’ Rattlesnake And Swan
• Jason Calhoun’s revelations of divine love
• KIASMOS’ II Reworked
• Wealthy Women’s Children
• Sunken Cages’ Neram Pularumbol (As The Dawn Breaks)
• Jutes’ Chin Up, Beautiful
• Rowena Wise’s Bad Things Feel Good*
• Blums’ Sunk Cost Fantasy
• Neptune’s Core’s Pivot
• Nepunian Maximalism’s Nāgabhūtaṃ
• Din Of Celestial Birds’ Takeoffs & Landings
• Xandria’s Eclipse
• Billy Morrison’s Hollow
• Arun Sood & Angeline Morrison’s Donn/Dubh
• Somi’s What Does It Take To Bloom?
• Maya Ongaku’s Nothing Space Music
• The Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, & The Recording Arts Orchestra Of Los Angeles’ John Williams Legacy
• Solon Holt’s Songs About You
• Crazy Clue’s Where The Dregs Dwell
• Team Work’s Somebody’s Gotta Do It
• Dinner Party’s Watchu Bringing?
• Houston Grand Opera’s Breaking The Waves
• Cletus Strap’s rappers suck.
• Stray Kids’ This & That
• Role Model’s Chuck Timely & The Hourglass
• The compilation Sittin’ With Blaze: A Tribute To Blaze Foley
• The compilation Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience
• The compilation Fully Nowhere: A World Resources Archive
• Hollywood Vampires’ At Montreux Jazz Festival live album
• Militarie Gun’s God Save The Gun (Deluxe)
• Uh Huh Her’s Nocturnes: Redux
• Paul Carrack’s The Country Side Of Paul Carrack (Volume Two)
• The Dresden Dolls’ Yes, Virginia…(Tailor’s Version)
• Picheolin’s 吉BOARD(Gilboard) mini album
• Ela Minus & Nick León’s qué les pasó a mis amigos? EP
• Initiate’s With Love // With Rage EP
• Nikki Nair’s The Sick Dimension EP
• imy3 & towhead’s imy3 & towhead Split EP
• Judy’s Death Of A Ladies’ Mutt EP
• Lonnie Gunn’s 2013 horsemeat scandal EP
• Fana Hues’ Catch N’ Release EP
• Max Styler’s I Don’t Think I Can Stop EP
• effe’s Solder EP
• Sesame Girl’s Butterfly Wing In A Silver Locket EP
• abracadabra’s Peel Away EP
