NEW BUMS, the duo of Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny and Skygreen Leopards’ Donovan Quinn, are all set to release their actually really lovely second album, Last Time I Saw Grace, in about three weeks, via the offices of Drag City; and they’ve made it three’s company this very afternoon with a new single taken from that very record, the industry-lamentin’ “Cover Band”, which you can hear below.
“Cover Band” laments the musician payin’ their dues on the circuit with the tiniest scent of Galaxie 500’s “Decomposing Trees” somewhere in its DNA. A singer is lost to the avant-garde, “after Nick told her / She played the tambourine too hard.”
This is New Bums propping up some dressing room table in a one-horse town, grinding it out, the shit business of Crème Brûlée: “We start with ‘Back In Black’, we end with ‘Candle In The Wind’”. Existential questions and minor chord shimmer make this a shadowy lament for the down at heel.
“Cover Band” follows the freewheelin’ blues of “Billy, God Damn” and the insouciant, folky beauty of “Tuned To Graffiti” as singles from the album.
They may project a mild air of irascibility with each other, but once you’ve dived into the album you realise: hell, they do actually care.
Look out for our review in the week of release – an album on which we pronounce: “It probably isn’t the kind of album that throws you back against the wall at some party downtown for a ruby-red lipped snog; but it very much is the kind of album you end up on a spontaneous road trip with, or hanging with on a rainy Sunday, and realised you had deep feelings for all along.
“Get it now, before that mate of yours in the irritatingly cool shirt rocks up on your doorstep with it under their arm, expecting you to be not clued up enough.”
New Bums’ Last Time I Saw Grace is released by Drag City digitally and on vinyl on March 19th; you can order yours direct from the label over at Bandcamp.
