After five years away, The Neighbourhood return with (((((ultraSOUND))))) - a record that feels less like a comeback than a renewal. The California band that defined black-and-white pop melancholy in the 2010s has found color again, or at least shades of it.
Recorded first at Conway Studios in Los Angeles with longtime collaborator Justyn Pilbrow, then finished in a cramped Van Nuys rehearsal space called The Beehive with Jono Dorr producing, (((((ultraSOUND))))) captures Jesse Rutherford, Zach Abels, Jeremy Freedman, Mikey Margott, and Brandon Fried reconnecting after a three-year hiatus. "We didn't have to make this record," Abels says. "We came back because we wanted to. It was like being in the garage again - fun and not so controlled."
Without a label deadline or anyone looking over their shoulders, the sessions unfolded naturally. "There was no one telling us we had to do it," Fried says. "We were self-governing for the first time - no label, no contract, just us deciding to make music again."
Across fifteen tracks, the band strips back the gloss and trusts feeling over flash. "Private" - the song that gives the album its name - folds self-examination into a hypnotic pulse. "Sometimes I didn't have the words," Rutherford says. "You'd need an ultrasound to see what I was feeling - to look inside and go, oh, that's what's happening."
Grey - the color they once rejected - runs through (((((ultraSOUND))))) like a quiet revelation. They even wrote "No Grey" back in 2013 as a declaration of absolutes. Now the shade shows up in the artwork and in several songs, a metaphor for nuance and growth. "Everything used to be black and white," Rutherford says. "Now it's grey."
(((((ultraSOUND))))) sounds like a band with nothing to prove and everything to say - five musicians rediscovering the balance between control and chaos that made them matter in the first place.
