Flat Worms Share New Single 'Sigalert'

Flat Worms announced their new LP, Witness Marks, which is coming out on Ty Segall's Drag City imprint GOD?, with their first single, "Time Warp In Exile" late last month. Their second single, “Suburban Swans,” was a punchy, grinding post-punk track about our perceptions of reality, free will, and watching voracious housing developments swallowing your hometown.

Their third single, “Sigalert,” out today, is an existential hardcore-influenced ripper. The new single came to lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Will Ivy while stuck in infamous Los Angeles traffic, tuned into the traffic and weather AM radio station.

The song transposes the maddening mundanity of stop-and-go traffic onto the pitfalls of modern life; Ivy alludes to grief, progress and healing as this non-linear, stop and start process, always trying to move towards a goal but feeling like nothing is in your control. Flat Worms recently announced their hometown release show in LA at Permanent Records Roadhouse on October 6th with Shannon Lay and QWOS.

Speaking to "Sigalert", Will Ivy writes, "I moved out of the city in 2020, and as a result now spend a lot of time in traffic. I started listening to the traffic and weather AM radio station, at first because I thought it was amusing but then religiously to check routes. A sigalert is a warning broadcast by radio stations telling of unusual or hazardous traffic conditions. Stuck motionless on the freeway, the mind spins into the existential: just when I get going I get stuck. Every time I move I come back again like I never was.“

Flat Worms’ new record includes hints of the garage-punk of their past work but looks to 80s hardcore, as well as contemporaries like Viagra Boys, Fontaines DC, and Parquet Courts, to create an urgency that undergirds the emotional turmoil and loss that connects these songs and the three longtime friends and bandmates.

Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others – sometimes, even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slate-grey discontent, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially. 

Each member of Flat Worms, lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist Will Ivy, drummer Justin Sullivan (Kevin Morby) and bassist Tim Hellman (OSEES) have navigated through the depths of their personal hardships in the four years since the band released Antarctica in early 2020. The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for the trio.

Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated their personal burdens by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world.

Flat Worms Tour Dates

October 6th - Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records Roadhouse - Album Release Show w/ Shannon Lay & QWOS
October 10th - Berlin, DE @ Lido 
October 12th - Brighton, UK @ Green door store
October 13th - Nottingham, UK @ Boat club
October 14th - London, UK @ Oslo (hackney)
Oct 15th - Bristol, UK @ Dareshack
October 16th - Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
October 17th - Dunkerque, FR @ les 4 écluses 
October 18th -  Paris, FR @ point éphémère 
October 19th - Saint Malo, FR @ la nouvelle vague 
October 20th - La roche sur yon, FR @ Quai M 
October 21st - Orléans, FR @ l'Astrolab
October 26th - Austin, TX @ Levitation Fest - 13th Floor
November 9th - Los Angeles, CA @ Globe Theater (Substance Festival)

Photo credit: Owen Schmit

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