Today New York City-based rockers Imaginary People share their new single "Crazy Eight." Lifted from their third full-length album Alibi due July 12th (pre-order), "Crazy Eight" follows up their recent single "Hometown," described by PopMatters as "landing SOMEWHERE BETWEEN '80s stadium rock (The Alarm, War-era U2) and latter day saints such as the War on Drugs." "Crazy Eight" is streaming at Youtube and on all streaming services to add to your favorite playlists.
Listen below!
About the song Imaginary People's frontman Dylan Von Wagner says, "Derived from a moog riff and drum machine sequence, it's what happens when an analyst delves into the mind of a young patient that plays in a dark circle. Once a human begins a certain disturbing experience where there seems to be no wrong, they're left with the paralyzing draft of air that is the parasite of hopelessness."
Imaginary People's forthcoming release Alibi is a response to the cultural civil war that Von Wagner sees unfolding all across the U.S.. "I just think we're in an ultimate fight right now," he says. "Our society is falling apart and the ins and outs of our cultural differences are splitting - it feels like what one person says is right and what the other person says is wrong and that's it. The whole time we were doing the record, it felt like normalcy was falling apart. The things you'd think would ordinarily be right and wrong aren't happening anymore, and that was very disturbing to me."
That cultural dystopia bristles through Alibi's 11 songs. Recorded by Phil Weinrobe (Nick Murphy, Pussy Riot, Stolen Jars) at Rivington 66 in New York City, as well as upstate with Eli Crews at Spillway Sound in the Catskills, and mixed by Eli Crews (Tuneyards, Deerhoof, Xylouris White) at Figure 8 in Brooklyn. This is an album that shimmers with a twisted beauty, which feeds off all of that disturbing substance and turns it into something both harrowing and beautiful.
As such, the band - completed by Mark Roth (guitar), Justin Repasky (keys/synth), Kolby Wade (drums), Bryan Percivall (bass/synth), and with additional synth work by Grant Zubritsky - have not just perfectly captured the times in which this record was written, but have managed to turn the nightmare of the modern world into something truly exquisite, pitting emotional vulnerability against an almost resigned stoicism. Just listen to the way that Von Wagner's voice trembles on opener "It's Simple" - the tenderly mournful opener written minutes after the singer watched the gun massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School unfold on live television - or the tentative fragility and dark romanticism of "Bronx Girl", which manages to still be hopeful in a world without hope. Elsewhere, the jittery "Neon Age" rails against a world in which people present a different version of their lives to society in order to impress them.
Right in the middle of it all is a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "State Trooper" - an unusual choice, but one that fits right in with the tone, atmosphere and outlook of the rest of the record, as well as Von Wagner's almost nihilistic vision of the world.
While there are glimpses of light throughout the darkness that permeates every aspect of Alibi - one that captures the nature of what humanity has become - and while its songs do reflect the harsh, bleak reality of being alive - and of the coldness and meanness of the big city, especially when the world feels like it's collapsing - it also manages to exist on its own, and on its own terms.
"Imaginary People are just in our own little world," says Von Wagner. "I don't think we really participate, we live in New York and it was made here, but we just keep to ourselves. I don't know where this stuff comes from or why I feel this way and write this. I feel like it's a weird addiction that I can't shake, and I don't think any psychoanalysis is going to shed light on it."
Welcome, then, to the world of Alibi. It's a cold, dark, lonely place, but so is the world. Stick around long enough, however, and the light might just start to shine through.
