Avalanches LP Boasts Cuomo, Patton, Haley Joel Osment

The Avalanches are turning their fascination with the detritus of modern life into something unusually expansive. The Australian group has revealed the 31-track lineup for its fourth studio album, No Bad Memories, due Oct. 16, assembling a wild cast that includes Jamie xx, Panda Bear, Barry Can’t Swim, Rivers Cuomo, Mike Patton, Haruomi Hosono, Ryoji Ikeda, Vegyn, Portraits of Tracy and actor Haley Joel Osment, among many others.

The group has previously shared the songs “Together,” featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss; “Every Single Weekend,” with Jamie xx; and “Blue Shadows,” their second collaboration with Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O following “Dial D for Devotion” from 2020’s We Will Always Love You.

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No Bad Memories appears to extend the Avalanches’ enduring, sample-minded sensibility into a meditation on the sounds that surround us every day. The group says the album was inspired by the “magical and insidious” ways advertising and branded technology become embedded in our memories, turning commercial jingles, startup sounds and forgotten audio logos into raw material. The result is described as an “ambivalent ode” to nostalgia, built from warm voices, melody and the unlikely beauty of discarded digital debris.

The collaborators reinforce that theme. Glitchtronica pioneer Ikeda appears on three tracks, including “Xerox Altalink B8055” and “Unicorn Quest™”; Yellow Magic Orchestra founder Hosono closes the album on “The Pavements Light”; Suzanne Ciani — whose pioneering electronic work helped shape the sonic language of advertising and new age music — joins Barry Can’t Swim on “Our Love Is Alive”; and Tunisian footwork artist Khadija Al Hanafi guests on four others.

There’s plenty of pop and rock lineage in the mix, too: Weezer frontman Cuomo turns up alongside Vegyn and Baby Marlboro on “All The Time in the World,” Animal Collective’s Panda Bear contributes to “Highfield,” Faith No More/Tomahawk vocalist Patton appears on three songs and Carly Simon lends her voice to “One More Fantasy.” Osment gets perhaps the most Avalanches-appropriate assignment of all, appearing on “El Dorado TV Spot” and “Superfun!™ TV Spot.”

The group has also unveiled a trailer starring Osment, directed by the Avalanches and Liam Oz.

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