Carpool Announce New Album & Share Single 'Can We Just Get High?'

Rochester, NY’s Carpool signed to the storied LA-based independent label SideOneDummy Records last month and today the band is announcing their first album for the label; My Life In Subtitles will be released March 22nd, 2024.

The first single from the record is the anthemic PUP-meets-Weezer pop-punk ripper “Can We Just Get High?,” with its surge of quasi-nihilistic recklessness and massive riffs. It’s one of many tracks on their new album that blends careless fun with abject desperation to create an existential crisis you want to dance to.

Bookended by two sub-two-minute piano-led songs, the bulk of Carpool’s sophomore album is a blistering collection of controlled chaos. Singing about existential angst, late-night self-flaggelation, tender yearning and not paying taxes, the band has crafted an album that balances their big riffs and off-the-walls punk with deeply personal explorations of growing up, fing up, and figuring it all out along the way, or at least trying to.

Speaking to the single, Stoph Colasanto writes: “I’d like to believe that this song speaks for itself in terms of what it means, but it genuinely is a touch more nuanced than what it appears to be at surface level. In many ways I look at this song as the spiritual successor to Salty Song. I did not want to write it. Talk to any band; big or small, and ask them how they feel about having to play their “hit” every night. I’d put money on it that 9 out of 10 of them will say it’s daunting, that they’re disillusioned with the track, and that it doesn’t mean what it once did to them. I did not want to write this song. My brother, Adam, called me one night and said, “You need a Salty Song-style banger on the album to push it forward.” He wasn’t wrong (he rarely is). I wrote the song that night in 25 minutes. The lyrics are meant to be wordy, tongue-in-cheek, and cluttered together almost like a panic attack (because maybe at certain points that’s what I’m talking about). How I’ve learned to handle my anxieties and fears of the everyday “mundane” — whether it’s healthy or not. I spell out the way I think about situations when I’m approached with them, the way my brain intakes information. “Love me, hate me, don’t care. Can we just get high” is straight up how I feel about everything. We could be mortal fing enemies, rivals from birth, and yet — we smoke a blunt (or do other drugs, or whatever you consider a vice) together and talk and most things will melt away. We could be lovers and just laying together and getting high could be the most intimate moment. Maybe it’s better to live life with dry eyes? Maybe it’s better to see things with a hazed out filter. Maybe it isn’t. Who the f am I to know? This album is about the way my life is chronicled for you to read since 2018. I think this is the most correct way to start it off. By showcasing how much of a fing basket case I truly am.”

The young band has been growing a dedicated following since its inception in 2018, known for its ability to craft thrashing yet heartfelt punk songs that dabble in emo, pop punk and hardcore. The band, consisting of guitarist/vocalists Chris ‘Stoph’ Colasanto and Tommy Eckerson with drummer Alec Westover and bassist Torri Ross, toured with CLIFFDIVER and Michael Cera Palin earlier this year and just returned from a buzzy set at THE FEST in Gainesville, FL. My Life In Subtitles was recorded with Jay Zubricky— the Buffalo-based producer who has worked with Every Time I Die, Pentimento, and Marigold, among others. 

Photo Credit:  Bridget Hagen