SWMRS Announce Debut Album Drive North, New Single 'Figuring It Out' Out Now
By: Caryn Robbins Nov. 09, 2015
Bay Area quartet SWMRS have announced that their debut album Drive North is due for release on February 12th, 2016 via Uncool Records. Noisey broke the news on Friday and premiered the band's new single "Figuring it Out," praising the track as a "poppy foot-tapper filled with skate-gang vocals." Listen to the song HERE.
Recorded in the band's hometown of Oakland, CA, Drive North was produced by FIDLAR frontman Zac Carper. "I wanted to work with SWMRS right when I heard their demos. And the way they all work together as a band is really inspiring. You can tell they have been friends since they were children," commented Carper on the collaboration.
"This is very much a coming of age record. It holds within the title one of the most important realizations that we had growing up. We spent a lot of time in our early years trying to find our creative roots, envying Los Angeles and wishing we could be from where 'the scene is happening'," offered singer Cole Becker on the album's lyrical content. Elaborating on the inspiration for the album's title, Becker shared, "Drive North is a sort of battlecry for everywhere else in the world where kids are making rock and roll music. Its about cultivating your own creativity within the world that you live in and basking in your individual identity."
Drive North will feature previously released tracks "Miley" and "Uncool." i-D Magazine premiered "Miley" in September, praising the song as "the most punk tribute to Miley Cyrus ever." The band's DIY music video for the track can be seen HERE.
The album will also feature an abridged version of "Harry Dean," a previously 17-minute epic the band originally recorded to soundtrack Saint Laurent Paris's Spring/Summer 2016 presentation. Having discovered SWMRS during their blistering performance at Burgerama IV, Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane shot portraits of the band before commissioning a piece of music and asking members of the band to walk in his Paris runway show.
2. BRB
3. Miss Yer Kiss
4. Turn Up
5. Figuring It Out
6. Ruining My Pretending
7. Uncool
8. Miley
9. D'You Have A Car?
10. Hannah
11. Silver Bullet
12. Drive North There's never been a punk band like SWMRS, the Oakland quartet that combines the caustic broadsides of The Clash, the amphetamine bubblegum of the Ramones, and the searing lyrics, propulsive energy, and raw honesty of Public Enemy, Frank Ocean, A Tribe Called Quest and Kurt Cobain. Formed after the dissolution of their previous band, Emily's Army, the childhood friends (Cole Becker, lead vocals, rhythm guitar; Max Becker, lead vocals, lead guitar; Joey Armstrong, drums, backing vocals; and Sebastian Mueller, bass, backing vocals) showcase telepathic chemistry on their formal debut, "Drive North." Produced by Zac Carper of FIDLAR, it's suffused with coming of age jams, subversive anthems to Miley Cyrus, and a sense of freedom forged out of modern-day confusion. The guitars draw blood, the drums detonate, the voice is unique-the sound is timeless.
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