VIDEO PREMIERE: The Basics - With This Ship (Live)

26 April 2017 | 5:00 pm | Staff Writer

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Stalwart Melbourne three-piece The Basics have been a little quiet in recent years, last gracing our ears with new material back in 2015 with their album Age Of Entitlement, but the boys are set to return next month with a new live album, and theMusic.com.au is stoked to premiere the video for LP track With This Ship.

The tune, for those keeping score, was featured on The Basics' 2009 EP Like A Brother (though it was also released as a standalone single), demonstrating the breadth of material fans can expect to hear on the full-length when it makes its landing in late May.

The band are no strangers to the live-album game, having previously released two full-lengths recorded on the fly, and they'll add to that oeuvre with fresh collection In The Rude!, recorded at seminal Melbourne spot Howler.

The album marks a welcome return to action for the band, though guitarist Tim Heath says, in many ways, you'd never know they'd taken time out.

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"Every time we have a break from playing together, I'm always amazed how quickly it comes back together," he said in a statement.

"We're almost like a family," he continued. "You can't choose each other, maybe; you go through some hard times and some great times, [and] you have to look after each other because the whole thing will fall apart otherwise."

Drummer Wally De Backer — also known as Gotye, though he's not been active under that moniker of late — is similarly re-energised by the reactivation, though he's a little more self-deprecating about reassuming his spot behind the kit: "I haven't been playing live with my solo project, so it's simply refreshing to play live in itself. Lazy right foot on the drums, that's for sure!"

We're sure he's just being modest; as you can hear in the video, there's no sign of stage rust at all in these recordings, and fans will be able to hook into the album in full upon its release on Friday 27 May.