Ed Schrader's MUSIC BEAT Announces New Album Coming This March

Baltimore-based post-punk band Ed Schrader's Music Beat recently announced their third full-length record and their Carpark Records debut entitled Riddles. Today the band shares the Dan Deacon-produced album's second single and title track. "Riddles" starts with a gorgeous and entirely unexpected piano introduction that threads throughout the soaring, cinematic song, showcasing the band's sonic expansion on this forthcoming album.

Ed Schrader's Music Beat needed to make this record. Nineteen tours in the U.S. since the Baltimore-based duo's formation in 2010, from headlining underground spaces to opening massive venues for Future Islands, had left vocalist Ed Schrader and bassist Devlin Rice exhausted - and hungry to take their music to the next level. ESMB originally worked in a maximalist drums, bass, and vocals mode, releasing the noise-rock full-lengths Jazz Mind (Load Records, 2012), and Party Jail (Infinity Cat Recordings, 2014). However, Ed and Devlin dreamed of a fuller sound - layered, breathing arrangements their early rapid-fire compositions always seemed to imply, without yet having the tools to realize. On Riddles, their first release for Carpark, the Music Beat begins their new life.

In search of a fresh direction, Ed and Devlin invited their close friend, electronic-pop maestro and fellow Baltimore-based artist Dan Deacon, to expand their sound and experiment with them as the album's producer, arranger, and co-writer. Working steadily in Dan's studio for two years in total collaboration, three evolving musicians pushed through an intense period of personal tumult and found purpose in the sounds they were committing to record. The result: a polished and passionate masterpiece of nuanced alt-rock.

Dan, Ed, and Devlin all poured emotions produced by major life changes into these sessions. While in Puerto Rico on a rare vacation, Ed learned of the death of his stepfather, a charismatic but abusive figure who'd cast a dominant shadow on his formative years. Devlin sat at the bedside of his brother, who'd long lived with a terminal illness, as he saw through his choice to die with dignity. And Dan's longest relationship, which had stretched across his entire career as a musician thus far, came to an end. "I looked forward to these sessions when everything else in life was a s-show," recalls Devlin, who began the record commuting from Providence to Baltimore, but moved into Dan's studio as it neared completion.

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