Thenewno2 - The Fear Of Missing Out (2012)
Edward
The Fear of Missing Out (stylised as thefearofmissingout) is the second studio album by the alternative rock group thenewno2. H.O.T. Records released it on 31 July 2012.[2] The album was produced by band members Dhani Harrison and Paul Hicks using the name "pHd".[2]
As part of the promotion for the album, thenewno2 released the track "Make It Home" on the band's Facebook page as well as to members of the band's website e-mail listing, with the publication Rolling Stone additionally receiving the single.[3] The album received generally positive reviews. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune described its music as "appropriately fidgety and restless, a beehive of sound that almost subliminally coalesces into songs".[4]
The album also, for fear of missing out, rarely misses a chance to experiment and surprise, from an excursion into hip-hop (complete with a guest rap from RZA in "The Wait Around") to the wall of churning fuzz which dominates "I Won't Go." The whole affair radiates urgency, giving fearofmissingout a sense of restless energy that helps it sound both independent-minded and eager to please.
His band, which both mercifully and wisely sounds nothing like his father's, is called thenewno2, and they are about to release their second album, thefearofmissingout, the somewhat irritating insistence on lower caps and no spaces between the words indicative of little more than the fact that Harrison was once a graphic designer.
Harrison was born in 1978, the only son of the Beatles bassist George Harrison and his wife Olivia. Raised in Henley and schooled locally, he later attended Brown University in Rhode Island to study physics and industrial design. In 2006, he coined the name thenewno2, inspired by his love of the Sixties TV show The Prisoner and also, he says, because he himself could never be number one (his father was always number one), and set up shop as an arts collective/design company, creating graphics for DVDs and websites.
Though each of the Beatles' sons have always operated under a strict code of silence when it comes to discussing their lot in life, none seems to have become major casualties of their inherited fame. Neither Julian nor Sean were ever going to emulate their father's success and soon stopped trying; likewise, James McCartney, a singer-songwriter who, at 34, has yet to release a full album, and Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr's son, is seemingly content as a session drummer.
But Dhani Harrison did step happily into a Beatles-hued limelight after his father's death in November 2001. He collaborated with Jeff Lynne on George's final album, Brainwashed, and a year later participated in the tribute show "Concert for George", revisiting his father's songs alongside Macca and Eric Clapton. He has since worked on the development of The Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game for the Xbox, and is perpetually rumoured, alongside the other Fab Four offspring, to be dusting off various Beatles rarities for imminent, if never quite materialising, release.
"To come out in the music business, you only really get one shot," he suggests. "A lot of people get to play small gigs first, and build up that way, without anyone really seeing them." It is only in this fashion, he continues, that a new band can discover their sound, who they are, and precisely what they are capable of. Thenewno2 never had that luxury.
"I could never just play in a pub in front of four people because I would have had all the press turn up," he says. "That way, you don't get to build up naturally. It makes the work feel unnatural, and puts a lot of unnatural pressure on you."
Which is why he decamped to California, to hang out with all the "weird people", and retain at least a kind of anonymity. If LA is a city where everybody has a colourful back story, then Harrison is merely one of many.
He has also recently married his long-term girlfriend, the former model Solveig Karadottir, about whom, no, he will not talk; likewise the recent claims that he and James McCartney, Sean Lennon and Zak Starkey were about to do something thoroughly foolish and form a next-generation Beatles supergroup. Rumours of these kinds, he complains, spread like wildfire, and to add anything to them is merely to fan the flames. He doesn't want to fan any flames.
"I have my own band, and I want things to happen for us slowly, organically," he says. "You know, the proper way." And so, to coincide with the launch of the album, he is planning an 18-month tour (arriving in the UK in October). "I love the kind of buzz you get when you turn up to a small town, and you shut down a whole street because there are so many people trying to get in. That's what I like. I like making people happy."
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