Chain Wallet is the sound of dreamy mythologies presented in widescreen, while simultaneously nodding back to an era where everything was in four-by-three. Picking up where the hazy, melancholic and undeniably catchy debut left off, the band now returns with a lusher – and at the same time, more eerie – sound.

While Chain Wallet’s first album was dreamed up in their rainy hometown of Bergen, the sophomore effort No Ritual found them emerging to a small cabin on a remote beach in the southwest of Norway. Here, among surfers – and while walking the beaches – they found out what kind of album they were going to make. 

While you still can catch a glimpse of Mary Chain here or Johnny Marr there, Chain Wallet are really establishing their own musical identity with No Ritual. Playing an important part in expanding the band’s sound on this record is Chiara Cavallari of the psychedelic shoegaze band FOAMMM. The guys say: “We had been wanting to collaborate with Chiara for a long time, and her ethereal presence is fortunately scattered all over the album.”

Both of Chain Wallet’s albums have followed loose and murky storylines about a conflicted protagonist. Where the first album revolved around themes like unresolved ambition and attempts of letting go of the past, No Ritual finds our anti-hero in state of spiritual limbo, while reaching out and trying to establish new symbolic meanings. The album is a post-apocalyptic dive into the mythical life of the millennial mind.

preorder/stream single

Chain Wallet - No Ritual

Jansen Records is a Oslo, Norway record label with the good stuff.