Jeff Rosenstock & Laura Stevenson

22 Rock City Road,Woodstock NY 12498

18 December, 2022

Description

HEY YOU OVER THERE ON THE INTERNET!!! JEFF ROSENSTOCK AND LAURA STEVENSON ARE GOING ON TOUR AND PLAYING MUSIC TOGETHER! I'M TALKIN' NEIL YOUNG SONGS, I'M TALKIN' THEIR OWN SONGS, MAYBE EVEN SOMETHING COOL I HAVEN'T THOUGHT OF AT THE TIME OF THIS AD COPY??? ANYWAY, WE HAVE LITERALLY NEVER DONE THIS AND IT'S GONNA BE A FUN OL' NIGHT SO COME ON DOWN TO THE FREAKIN THING BABY -------------- Jeff Rosenstock: NO DREAM​ is the fourth full-length from Jeff Rosenstock. It comes at a time of unparalleled chaos and confusion, division and despair, the depths of which would have been impossible to predict when much of it was being written over the course of the last few years. And yet the record feels prescient, unexpectedly and uniquely suited for this moment. "It was feeling like a very personal record for me," says Rosenstock, newly settled in Los Angeles after a lifetime on the opposite coast. "A lot of it was stemming from the anxiety I was feeling from the last two years, this existential crisis of wondering who I am." Rosenstock has found himself in a surprising position. As he puts it simply: "I didn't expect to be doing well, in my life, ever." After building a cult following with the acerbic ska-punk of the Arrogant Sons of Bitches and DIY heroics of Bomb the Music Industry!, Rosenstock's first proper solo record, 2015's ​We Cool?​, was a step into uncharted territory, fully untethered from genre and expectation. Followed by 2016's ​WORRY.​ and the surprise New Year's Day launch of ​POST-​ in the early hours of 2018, Rosenstock was facing down that least punk of opportunities: a career playing music. "I got so used to putting out records that only a few people in the punk underground liked," he says. "And a lot of people in the punk underground also didn't like them, either." Except things have changed, and ​NO DREAM ​arrives with an entirely new set of expectations in an entirely new era. The greatest surprise is that Rosenstock's deeply personal self doubt is expressed in a way that captures a universal feeling of shock and uncertainty, his own growing anxieties about his place in the world holding space for our own. "I was trying to not be afraid of using phrases that weren't immediately clear to me, aside from how they sounded and felt, then allowing them to reveal themselves over time." The resulting songs would be recorded once again with Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Hard Girls, Joyce Manor) at the Atomic Garden, where Rosenstock took on mixing duties alongside Shirley for the first time. Opting to stay off the computer "even more than usual" and record to tape with outboard gear, the result is a lived-in sound that gives each song its own individual voice and organic energy. "Scram!" pulls from the overdriven guitar sound of ​Kerplunk​ in its mash-up of chugging palm mutes and Weezer melodies, while "Old Crap" mines the pop-punk of Rosenstock's youth and dares to drop a classic "pick it up!" rallying cry. "Music is all vocabulary -- you learn new words but you don't forget the old ones," he says. Having taken some time away from his work as a solo artist to recalibrate and reset over the last year, Rosenstock stayed busy playing alongside Mikey Erg, recording and touring with the Bruce Lee Band, releasing a Neil Young covers record with frequent collaborator Laura Stevenson, reissuing two of his own out-of-print early albums, compiling a live album and 76 page photo book, and scoring over 80 episodes of the Cartoon Network series ​Craig of the Creek​. In fully returning to his own voice, it's no surprise that Rosenstock's output has never been more eclectic, reflected across ​NO DREAM​'s 13 songs. Ultimately, it's the title track, with its breakneck pivot from dreamy Mazzy Star to careening Minor Threat, that gives the album its aching heart. "You can't help it. You can't stop it. You see these atrocities and want it to end. But it's not going to stop, and when that feeling sets in it's a full-on panic freak-out." It may not be a hopeful message, but it's one that ties together the sense of impending doom and gives it direction, voicing a rage that many struggle to articulate. "I thought I had just made a record for no one," he says. "What's the point of feeling this way? Does it help to vocalize it?" Rosenstock's rhetorical question is answered by ​NO DREAM​, an accidentally universal record for a damaged, difficult time. ---------------- Laura Stevenson begins her new album in a state. “I’m in a state again, but I stay polite,” she sings queasily over a nest of scraping cello strings. For an uncomfortable minute the uneasiness lingers until the song explodes into an incantation: “It keeps me alive.” It is a powerful and apt beginning for a record that finds the acclaimed singer-songwriter charting—in exacting detail—some of the most turbulent states of her life. Here she documents a crisis in real-time, “I relocated for a bit after finishing my last record, to help someone that I love very much who was going through something absolutely unthinkable,” she explains. The album follows every turn as that year unfolded, from rage to helplessness, desperation, and in its own sort of way, acceptance. “For obvious reasons, I won’t be discussing the specific nature of what happened. I left everything kind of open-ended, but I think doing that helps people relate more to the general experience of going through a crisis or helping someone else through one,” Stevenson says, a sentiment that comes through on every moment of the upcoming self-titled album, out August 6th 2021. Take “State,” for example. As the song builds, it becomes lost in the rhythm of its own heart-thumping anxiety, every instrument struggling for breath in the second chorus. “I become rage,” Stevenson admits. “A shining example of pure anger.” Then, just when it seems to have passed the point of all reason, something transformative happens: the anger and frustration that have been building bend, turning instead into something “pure and real and sticky and moving and sweet.” The nauseous anxiety (and surprising transformation) of “State” is followed by a collection of songs that move gracefully between genres, something Stevenson has become known for. The album slides from indie-rock anti-anthems like “Don’t Think About Me” and “Sandstorm” to Harry Nilsson-style string-laden ballads, mid-tempo alt-country, and quiet acoustic confessionals. “The album was written as a sort of purge and a prayer,” Stevenson says. When it finally came time to record, she was pregnant with her first child. “It was a very intense experience to re-live all of the events of the previous year, while tracking these songs, with my daughter growing inside me, reliving all of that fear and pain and just wanting to protect her from the world that much more. It made me very raw.” Considering this new context, the lyrics to the gently-twanging radio single “Continental Divide” hit that much harder, “what could I do right to keep you safe all of your life?” While it is often emotionally heavy, Laura Stevenson never strays from its true motivating force: love. The journey that this new collection of songs takes the listener on may be a familiar one for anyone going through the stages of grief. “Mary” sees Stevenson alone at her piano, recalling the long drive to the scene of the crisis, an agnostic bargaining with holy figures to save a life. On mid-album highlight, “Sky Blue, Bad News” Stevenson punishes herself for things that were ultimately out of her control, going over events in her life that lead up to this moment to figure out why all of this was happening, “Did I shirk something? Did I hurt someone? Was I ever any good? Was I ungrateful?” All this uncertainty and darkness is juxtaposed against a Crazy-Horse-like canter (a song in particular which may remind listeners of Stevenson’s recent Neil Young covers EP with longtime friend and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock, who also plays guitar on some of the new self-titled album’s tracks).