Free Throw Share 'Down & Out' Single

Free Throw share "Down & Out", the latest single to be released from their new album Piecing It Together, produced by Will Yip (Bartees Strange, The Menzingers, Tigers Jaw) and out June 25th on Triple Crown Records. It follows the release of "Cloud Sick" earlier this month, which Uproxx said possessed "one of the most infectious choruses the Nashville band has ever put to tape," and Brooklyn Vegan called "an impassioned, emotive song that connecs the dots between noodly '90s Midwest emo, anthemic 2000s post-hardcore, and the fresh perspective of the genre's current wave."

The release of "Down & Out'' comes with a music video as well. Directed by Michael Herrick, the video takes place in the same Free Throw Video Universe (FTVU) as the recently released video for "Cloud Sick", playing the part of the stolen VHS tape that the band were driving around Nashville looking for when we last saw them. As it starts, we see Free Throw pop the tape into the tube TV on the set of the public access show where the "Cloud Sick" video ended, and are transported to an open field at night where the band play around a bonfire as their friends slowly grow it by tossing objects into the flames. "Down & Out" as lead vocalist Cory Castro explains "is a song about the in-between of depression and recovery-that point where it's hard to get out of bed but you know you are working your way towards it." The visual in the video manifests a similar feeling of being on the brink of a breakthrough, letting go of the past as the growing flames building to the inevitable dawn will bring the light of the sun.

Like other performing artists over the past year, Free Throw found themselves off the road for an extended period of time. As unsettling as the shift was, it allowed them to slow down, and among other revelations, reconnect with their hometown. "We had an opportunity to enjoy the spaces we've created for ourselves here in Nashville, and lean into some of our other interests outside the band--something we rarely have time for," relates drummer Kevin Garcia. As such, part of promoting their new album (the new music video included) will be about highlighting what they love about the city and surrounding area. A town with an incredible indie and punk music scene, dive bars, art studios and other curiosities often obscured by the outsized shadow of Music Row and the downtown honkey tonks.

With Piecing It Together, their fourth full-length album, Free Throw also documents their growth as individuals grappling with the hard truths, that with age, become harder to ignore or cover up with an endless string of late nights out drinking with friends. After a decade of hard work, including countless performances worldwide, the members - Cory Castro, Lawrence Warner, Justin Castro, Jake Hughes, and Kevin Garcia - have a fresh perspective on life. The band is through obsessing over what comes next and romanticizing the moments that have already passed. Instead, with some time they didn't know they needed away from gas station snacks and "free" drink tickets, Free Throw is making music about the present, and how seeking balance in our lives is far more meaningful work than the endless pursuit of whatever we deem to be 'enough.'

"In normal times, it's very hard for a band like us to feel as if we have the freedom to take time off," Garcia explains. "We'd go home to write and record, then we go on tour. Rinse and repeat." In a way, writing and recording an album in 2020 was comparable to being a band in a control group in a scientific study. What road would they take with all of the usual outside influences held at bay? "When we got into this writing process, we stopped feeling like we existed in a mold or on a path that we were supposed to keep going on with our contemporaries," relates Garcia. "We stopped worrying about what tour we may be fighting for next or what some other band was doing. We were just in a vacuum, writing songs for our own enjoyment."

Throughout the album's twelve tracks, Piecing It Together finds Free Throw abandoning childhood notions of success and happiness through a thorough exploration of personal fulfillment. It's about reaching the heights that once felt impossible and everything that comes after. How no matter what we do or where we go, we must continue to wake up and find the strength to keep on keeping on despite everything we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Piecing It Together is an exploration of self-acceptance, and Free Throw invites everyone to join.

Listen here:

Photo Credit: Imani Givertz

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