MILLY Share New Single 'Bittersweet Mary' Ahead of Upcoming Album
Their new album "Your Own Becoming" is out June 28th.
By: Josh Sharpe Jun. 12, 2024
MILLY have shared the third preview of their new album Your Own Becoming (out June 28th via Dangerbird Records). “Bittersweet Mary” serves as the album's cathartic centerpiece, principal songwriter Brendan Dyer singing in hushed tones over muscular riffs. The song also features some of the album's most nuanced production, with acoustic guitars and mellotron adding a haunting quality to the bridge.
“This song was actually co-written in a song trade with my close friend, Dan Poppa (People I Love, Waveform*)” shares Dyer. “I ended up taking his song and changing up the lyrics and writing a whole second part. Bittersweet Mary was his title and it’s a song about mystery and magic and love and death. Yarden does his first ever scream at the end of the song before the guitar solo brings it all home. It's a triumphant and powerful song -- anthemic like the goal of a lot of these.”
Armed with towering, surging guitar riffs, crystalline and inviting hooks, and a newfound collaborative approach, MILLY’s sophomore LP feels like a total reinvention. Across 10 pummeling and undeniable songs, Your Own Becoming finds its power in channeling your darkest thoughts into something galvanizing and productive, a document of how doubling down on your art in the face of serious fear and doubt can be grounding.
Work on this release started thanks to a revelation that can only come from a period of personal crisis. Brendan Dyer, who’s dealt with anxiety for most of his life, decided to go on long walks every morning where he’d process his emotions, clear his mind, and do something that got him out of the house. “I think about death all the time,” says Dyer. “At this point in my life, I'm extremely aware of how time moves quickly.” While these thoughts could have devolved into potentially overwhelming him, this daily ritual allowed him some space. He jotted down notes from his dreams and he used his dread to grab onto the sustaining force in his life: his band. While the band’s debut LP 2022’s Eternal Ring and past tours with Swervedriver were successes, he wanted to be laser-focused on both his songwriting and his bandmates in the following year as he’d never done before.
On New Year’s Day, 2023, he corralled his bandmates to write and demo out Your Own Becoming, their most confident and organic effort to date. Dyer would take ideas he wrote down on his daily walks and each week, the band would meet up without fail. “There was newfound discipline and a renewed excitement about our music,” says Dyer. “I had always wanted to have a band that would just get together every week. Even if we're not writing, we're hanging out all the time, we're listening to music together, and we're jamming.” Dyer partly credits the collective laser focus on this album with how the band’s live lineup gelled from touring with bands like Teethe and waveform* as well as a burgeoning friendship with engineer and producer Sonny DiPerri (NIN, Narrow Head, My Bloody Valentine). “We were really inspired by him,” says Dyer. “Thanks to him we realized we could step things up a notch.”
While originally conceived as a solo project, MILLY embraced a newfound collaborative approach for Your Own Becoming, something that was only hinted at on 2022’s Eternal Ring. After a few months of painstakingly demoing songs, Dyer, along with bassist Yarden Erez and drummer Connor Frankel, decamped with DiPerri to East West Studios and Dangerbird’s Recording Studio in Los Angeles. (New guitarist Nico Moreta joined the band after recording).
Last month the band shared the blistering single “Spilling Ink,” which Alt Press praised, writing that it takes “their towering, ultra-fuzzy alt-rock into a new level of calibration.” MILLY announced the record in April with lead single “Drip From The Fountain,” by far the most infectious song of their entire catalog with an explosive chorus and airtight melodic hooks that recall early Death Cab For Cutie. The track was praised by Stereogum, Paste Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, Rolling Stone (Song You Need To Know), and Consequence, who called it an "an anthemic slice of indie rock that melts into fuzzy, comforting shoegaze.”
Fresh off a run of dates with Narrow Head, MILLY are gearing up for an East Coast run supporting Fiddlehead and Gel, kicking off with their own headline show in New York at Elsewhere’s Zone One on July 24th. The band will return home for album release shows in Los Angeles at the Troubadour and San Francisco at Bottom of the Hill alongside slowcore pioneers Idaho. They’ll head out on a newly announced East Coast run with Balance and Composure before returning home to support Basement at their LA show on Oct 18th at Hollywood Palladium. Tickets for all shows on-sale now, available HERE.
Tour Dates
*new dates in bold*
June 15th - Davis, CA @ Davis Music Festival
July 24th - Brooklyn, NY @ Zone One
July 26th - Norwalk, CT @ District Music Hall #
July 27th - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer #
July 28th - Baltimore, MD @ Zika Farm #
July 29th - Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall #
July 30th - Asheville, NC Grey Eagle Tavern & Music Hall #
July 31st - Nashville, TN @ The Basement East #
Aug 1st - Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West #
Aug 2nd - Louisville, KY @ Portal #
Aug 3rd - Cleveland, OH @ Mahalls #
Aug 7th - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill ^
Aug 10th - Los Angeles, CA @ The Troubador ^
Oct 3rd - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount %
Oct 4th - Providence, RI @ Fete Music Hall %
Oct 5th - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore %
Oct 7th - Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall %
Oct 8th - Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew's Hall %
Oct 9th - Indianapolis, IN @ HI-FI (The Annex) %
Oct 11th - Chicago, IL @ The Riviera Theatre %
Oct 12th - Lakewood, OH @ The Roxy %
Oct-13 - Washington, DC @ The Howard Theatre %
Oct 18th - Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium *
Tracklist:
01 Blocked On Everything
02 Running The Madness
03 At Odds
04 Drip From The Fountain
05 Past The Glow
06 Spilling Ink
07 Bittersweet Mary
08 Living Days Again
09 Los Angeles Filter
10 Nothing To Learn From
# w/ Fiddlehead & Gel
^ w/ Idaho
* w/ Basement
% w/ Balance and Composure
Photo credit: Gilbert Trejo
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