Liverpool instrumental trio Neverbody will self-release “Self Talk” on November 3, 2025 in vinyl and digital formats. The record is framed by the band as “a swim through the subconscious,” balancing technical, jazzy playing with a dreamlike atmosphere and “a real sense of storytelling” without vocals. As they put it: “Self Talk showcases a blend of technical jazzy playing and a dreamlike atmosphere, evoking a cerebral journey through our own subconscious.”
Formed and active across the North-West, the group—guitarist and bandleader Alex Cottrell, bassist Jack Austen–Vincent, and drummer Gareth Dawson—have shared stages with Tricot, A Burial At Sea, Kusanagi, and Fly Fly Triceratops, and have become a favorite at Liverpool’s Outpost. Their touchstones include Mogwai, American Football, and Minus The Bear; a press nod called the music “Ephemeral, viscous and hypnotizing.” ~ Right Chord Music. For listeners looking for coordinates, the band lists American Football, Tortoise, Badbadnotgood, Mogwai, and Minus The Bear.
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Cottrell sums up his guitar vocabulary plainly: “My biggest influences as a guitar player are the harmonic languages of Allan Holdsworth and Pat Metheny, and a bunch of 20th century classical music, sprinkled with some early post rock like Tortoise, Do Make Say Think and Explosions In The Sky. I try my best, without any lyrics, to capture this ideal middle ground between technical playing and emotional impact that I so admire in other artists.”
Recording, process, and credits
“Everything was carefully prepared with all the tempo changes and arrangements written out beforehand,” Cottrell notes. Much of the album was built at his home studio, with drums tracked at Liverpool’s Coastal Sound—where, as the band points out, sessions have hosted Nile Rogers, Alex Turner, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Coral, The Zutons, and more.
“Gareth and I rather went back to our post-student days by returning to Coastal Sound where we had recorded our final release for our previous band Glossom,” he says. “There we worked with engineer Tom Roach to build a roomy and atmospheric drum sound for ‘Self Talk’. Each track has a tailored approach in mic positions, snare tuning, kick drum beaters, as well as accommodating the array of sticks, hot rods, mallets and brushes that Gareth uses on the kit throughout.”
From there, “armed with the multitracks of our 2 day session at Coastal Sound,” Cottrell and Austen-Vincent built the bass and guitars: “Everything is real amps in either my home studio or the adjacent room in my house.” Additional parts were chosen to strengthen live-ready lines rather than complicate the core: “I still wanted the music to hold up on stage even if we didn’t have the additional players with us, so a lot of it is doubling guitar lines and adding texture.”
Guests include vibraphonist Michael Hughes (“I really wanted a proper vibraphone player on ‘Who Is We’ and I found Michael Hughes, a local and very experienced jazz percussionist, to just about fit his instrument into the home studio. I think he was a bit baffled by the track at first but did a great job nonetheless!”), violist John Pearson (“brought the lovely warmth of his viola to ‘Farewell, Familiar’”), and pianist Antonis Kastellani (“recorded his piano for ‘Footfalls’ remotely in his house in London”).
The album was produced, engineered, and mixed by Cottrell; drums engineered by Tom Roach; mastered by Stephen Kerrison at Weird Jungle; cover art by Silvia Pedrina. Liner notes: written and performed by Neverbody.
The concept in motion, track by track
“Fantasies” (5:35)
“In an album that is meant to cover the highs and lows of the inner world, we start at its zenith — a lucidity of imagination so significant that one can stage themselves emotionally within a make-believe moment of euphoria. I wanted the opener to be really bold in its melodies and to have a feeling of triumph, of going on some great adventure, but also a gentler middle section that points to the endearing naivety of this experience. To me it’s miraculous and like a part of childhood that never leaves us.”
“Who Is We” (5:16)
Sparked by an odd mental habit: “Inspired by a realisation that my inner monologue used the word ‘we’ when talking about, say, what work I was going to do that day — ‘we need to email this person’ ‘we need to try and do this thing better’. I had subconsciously separated my inner monologue and my own awareness of it into two distinct but (mostly) co-operative entities for some reason.” The piece tracks confusion → revelation → self-analysis. “With the addition of the vibraphone it has a bit of a detective feeling to it, especially at the beginning, which is about right for this tribute to internal curiosity. ‘Fantasies’ is completely lost in imagination, whereas this next one starts to analyse and question the inner world.”
“A Demonstration” (4:10)
A dry look at over-analysis and technical obsession. “With that analysis comes the threat of over-analysis, of becoming cold and aloof, overly concerned with every speck of theoretical and logical detail.” The title nods to an offhand critique from Cottrell’s father: “on showing him an earlier Neverbody track one time, [he] said it sounded like a demo you get on a keyboard.” Cottrell saw the point and leaned in: “I realised I was so concerned with being technically proficient and creating some ‘elegant structure’ in the music that I had forgotten to be driven by anything emotional or vulnerable. So I channelled that into ‘A Demonstration’ which has this calculated, rather mechanical thing going on. It is meant to be a bit of heavier, riffy fun and, by design, is the least emotionally engaging piece on the album for me.”
“Rumination & Ruin” (4:48)
The middle section darkens. “Here, in part by succumbing to the temptation to over-analyse from before, the inner world becomes a place of anxiety where one is lost in the same way as ‘Fantasies’, but in an imagined personal hell instead. I used to have awful panic attacks in my early 20s and have known what it is to feel addicted to ones own worries. This track intends to start with a lumbering sense of unease that can’t be shaken off, and leads to a loss of control and a spiral into panic in the 2nd half.”
“Ideas Of Reference” (3:32)
Paranoia and overstimulation rendered as twitchy motion. “The titular psychological concept is one where an individual perceives innocuous events or coincidences as relating personally to them — so thinking that some people laughing on the street must be laughing at you, or that a convoluted string of events were contrived just for your benefit. I wanted ‘Ideas’ to have this wonky and agitated feel to it, like the mind’s reaction to a world too complex to process, like being this highly sprung little goblin going around trying to figure out what the big conspiracy must be.”
“Footfalls” (4:01)
A reset and a look outward. “Now things have calmed down a bit and there’s a yearning for change and reflection. This one is a bit more on the jazzy side and its slightly stop-start nature is meant to give an impression of people watching, of seeing all these other inner worlds of those around us going this way and that. I added all these claps and bits of body percussion and then this scat like singing of the main melodies to make it more inviting and hopefully create a sense of renewed humanistic clarity rather than the paranoia of before.”
“New Sincerity” (4:55)
Self-awareness versus cynicism. “When I was writing ‘New Sincerity’ it was only the second piece I’d worked on for the album and I was caught on a sense that all this self-awareness, especially when exacerbated by the technology/media environment, had the potential to pull me towards a greater level of irony and cynicism.” The risk, as Cottrell frames it: self-knowledge as armor. “One could become so deft in understanding what was going on in one’s own head and how you’re seen by others that it could still be rearranged into an elaborate armour against embarrassment and vulnerability, rather defeating the purpose in my view. So I tried to press on with sincerity despite this, to hold what I would take seriously from my thoughts and feelings to a higher standard, despite it appearing to be against the apparent trend of histrionics and hollow irony, despite needing to take the risk of seeming sentimental or naïve.”
“Farewell, Familiar” (7:22)
Letting go and keeping a line to hope. “After spending too much time over the years lost in my own inner world, excusing the worst excesses of my introversion, trying to live some imagined life, I felt like I was leaving something of myself behind to keep moving forwards.” It’s also a personal reversal on length: “When we first started the band I had a bit of a thing against tracks being needlessly long and didn’t see why anyone would release something longer than 5 minutes unless they really had something worth saying that would take that long. Well, at 7:22, ‘Farewell’ is our longest ever effort and hopefully justifies that length with its inspiration of the power of nostalgia and the difficulty in overcoming one’s own nature and, over the course of its runtime, I wanted to present an ultimately hopeful and resolute face to the uncertainty that comes with that. I wonder if past me would agree?”
