Sometimes, a small change can make a big difference; for Washington D.C. quartet Broke Royals, that change was brought about by bringing on their contemporary Bartees Strange as a test-run producer for new material that would be collected as a follow-up to their 2019 second album Saint Luxury. It paid off: Strange encouraged the band to add in synthesizers and a horn section, helping them to push their boundaries, and the first of the new batch entering the public domain is punchy teaser track ‘Postcard’.
Of the song, vocalist Philip Basnight says that he ‘carried [the] lyric, “For a moment of peace in a season of pain”, around for years before I found the right story,” says Basnight. “[Finding the postcard] took me back to that exact headspace: the last great moment we shared before the relationship ended. It fit the lyric I had exactly and, all of the sudden, the whole song came to life.”
From that spark of inspiration comes their first new material in two years, the prelude to their forthcoming third album, due next year, with the production overseen by Strange. Hear ‘Postcard’ first on Backseat Mafia below, and make sure you have Broke Royals on your radar for 2022.
