Two Door Cinema Club Return With “Wonderful Life,” Tease Upcoming Album Keep On Smiling: Exclusive

When Two Door Cinema Club returned back in 2019 with False Alarm, there was a delightful tone of being “seriously unserious.” But now, that lighthearted message means something a bit different; after two years of a pandemic and a lengthy period of being stuck at home, playful and positive art helped lessen the weight of our global situation, and as most of us exit lockdown, there’s a definable sense of tension around re-entering the world and starting over.

For Two Door Cinema Club, they just want you to keep calm and smile on. Today (June 16th), they’ve announced their forthcoming fifth studio album, set for release on September 2nd of this year. Keep On Smiling as a title implies a couple different things: for one, it’s a steadfast image of positivity and optimism, a plea to keep spirits bright in the face of anguish. But it also suggests that that anguish is nearly impossible to avoid, that the heaviness of our current reality is too hard to ignore, and to keep on smiling is an ironic way of acknowledging everyone’s pessimism.

The dichotomy of this idea — optimism versus pessimism, acknowledging change versus ignoring it — is at the core of Keep On Smiling. And in true Two Door Cinema Club fashion, the band has channeled these ideas through a bright, neon-colored glow, full of glitzy synths, classic melodies, and some nods to their raucous and bustling debut, Tourist History.

Along with announcing Keep On Smiling, Two Door Cinema Club have shared the album’s lead single, “Wonderful Life,” which represents the LP’s contrasting ideas perfectly. Though bassist Kevin Baird and guitarist Sam Halliday claim that a bulk of Keep On Smiling was crafted pre-pandemic in the months following False Alarm, “Wonderful Life” was one of the more recent tracks they worked on, and serves well as the album’s thesis and entry point. “It feels perfect, it sounds like us, it is us,” Baird says of the song. “We’re starting to get into the summer, it’s a ‘here we go’ kind of thing.”

Indeed, “Wonderful Life” finds the Northern Ireland trio meeting the moment, embracing the tension that they’ve pondered from their homes over the last few years. “Talk about it but you never ever want to think about it,” sings frontman Alex Trimble in the song’s first verse, later warning that “you can’t make any sense when you’re building a fence around you.” The song urges for transparency and openness, maintaining that since “it’s a lonely little life/ a lonely little lifetime,” there’s no point in closing yourself off to connection and vulnerability.

Not only does the band represent these ideas well, they sound fresh and renewed. Trimble has evolved a great deal as a frontman, adding more layers to his soaring vocal deliveries and channeling an ’80s new wave-esque vibrato in the song’s bridge. But throughout Keep On Smiling in general is the sound of a band truly unified, even after 15 years and massive changes in their indie rock lane.

In addition to gearing up for the release of Keep On Smiling, Two Door Cinema Club are currently out on their first run of shows since last year’s Reading and Leeds Festival. They’ve certainly got their eye on festivals in particular — amidst a few headline shows this summer, the band is also set to play Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival in July, ensuring that their euphoric vibes will be well represented in Europe’s renewed festival season. They’ve also announced a major European and North American tour set for this fall;