Pre-Order 08/05/26 - His Name Is Alive: Home Is In Your Head (CD)

This item is available for pre-order only and will be dispatched on or around its release date (08/05/26)

His Name Is Alive, the long-standing ethereal darkwave project of Michigan musician Warren Defever, announces the repressing of the band’s first three records on 4AD – Livonia, Home Is In Your Head, and Mouth By Mouth – available from 8th May.

Recently reissued in 2024 as part of a quickly sold-out coloured vinyl boxset entitled How Ghosts Affect Relationships: 1990-1993, with audio sourced from the original analogue tapes and remastered by Defever himself, the albums are now each available on Standard Black LP and CD.

His Name Is Alive has a long history with 4ad, signed to the label in 1989, after label founder Ivo Watts-Russell fell in love with their dark and fragmented sonic inclinations via cassette demos sent in the post. While His Name Is Alive’s sound was in line with the gothic echoes of labelmates Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, they also had a different, nonpareil quality, something existing on the boundary of this earth and another realm further underground.

The band’s second album with 4ad, recorded in Warren Defever's home studio and remixed by Ivo Watts-Russell and John Fryer (as with their debut), sees 23 songs quick-firing through emotions, with moments of soothing calm soon clashing with white noise and visceral chaos. Highlights include ‘Her Eyes Were Huge’, on which lightly strummed acoustic guitar uplift Karin Oliver’s swooning, gossamer drawl; the synth-led, inquisitive and prickly ‘Are We Still Married?’; and pensive instrumental waltz ‘Siting Still Moving Still Staring Outlooking’ (synced in 1996’s Jerry Maguire).

A varied yet grounded compilation of new material and old (some dating back to Defever’s junior high days), it found the band entering a confident creative stride, leaving listeners enthralled by both its beauty and darkness and proving Defever’s inspired productions utterly unique.

1. Are You Comin’ Down This Weekend?
2. Her Eyes Were Huge Things
3. The Charmer
4. Hope Called In Sick
5. My Feathers Needed Cleaning
6. The Well
7. There’s Something Between Us and He’s Changing My World
8. The Phoenix, A Pool of Ice
9. Are We Still Married?
10. Put Your Finger in Your Eye
11. Home Is in Your Head
12. Why People Disappear
13. Here Eyes Are Huge
14. Save the Birds
15. Chances Are We Are Mad
16. Mescalina
17. Sitting Still Moving Still Staring Out
18. Very Bad A Bitter Hand
19. Beautiful And Pointless
20. Tempe
21. Spirit And Body
22. Love’s A Fish Eye
23. Dreams Are Of The Body