Native Sun Share New Single 'When She' From 'Off With Our Heads' EP

Native Sun, the Brooklyn punk rock band consisting of Danny Gomez (Vocals/Guitar), Justin Barry (Bass) and Nico Espinosa (Drums) are releasing their new Walter Schreifels produced EP on October 14th on Grand Jury Music.

The band is sharing one of their most vulnerable and deeply personal songs to date today with "When She", which lead singer Gomez wrote while his mother's health declined. While the loss of a parent is a profoundly painful experience for anyone to process, both bassist Barry and drummer Espinosa have experienced the same loss.

Through the song, their bond, and shared catharsis shines through. Gomez' vocals stretch and streak across the nimble arrangements, carrying the torch for his mother, but also for those who are experiencing the depths of grief. "When She" is at once purely a personal exercise in eulogizing, but its ubiquity lies in the search for stability, for meaning and understanding loss.

Native Sun's "When She" is both a joyful expression of love and remembrance, while also acting as a reminder that sorrow abates and you're left with the beauty of your loved one's memory.

Speaking to "When She" the band writes;

"The most personal track we've written up to this point -- composed during the time of my mother's declining health and ultimate passing away. I wrote the song from start to finish in about half an hour and post-writing it realized how it encapsulated what my reality was in that moment...seeing somebody you love fade away inside and imagining what that must be like. Always found it interesting how the cheeriest sonically sounding track turned out to be the most somber lyrically, the paradox of reality.

"When Danny showed us that song, it was really emotional," Justin Barry says (bass), "Everyone in this band has lost a parent. It's all something we share and have bonded over, music is all we have."

The band shared their single, "Sister", earlier this year, following it up with the politically charged Stooges-influenced "There's Revolution". On "There's Revolution," Native Sun channel the heyday of the Lower East Side punk scene, with Gomez' snarl and the band's fuzzed-out guitars even recalling bands like The Stooges at their most gnarly.

Native Sun has never shied away from the political, but the tenor on their new EP is at a fever pitch. Looking at our "new normal", with climate apocalypse, civil unrest, unprecedented natural disasters, and overlapping public health emergencies, not to mention the political efforts to combat these society-shattering issues as impotent as ever, a call for revolution never felt as evergreen.

On Native Sun's Off With Our Heads, Walter Schreifels writes;

"Off With Our Heads is a spot-on title especially after watching Native Sun go so fully primal in the studio, the urgency of each track is palpable. As a fan there's an electricity to Native Sun's live show that we wanted to capture for this recording, after five intensely creative and fun filled days we got that and more.

On the strength of Danny's lyrics each song paints a picture and the musical chemistry and excitement flows throughout. I especially love the Hawkwind-esque groove of "There's Revolution" and my personal fave "When She"'s psychedelic vocal melody. There's also an immediacy about "Sister" that gives it a special spark like Lou Reed. Truthfully all the songs are great especially how they fit together to tell the story of one of the most exciting bands in New York today, so proud to have been a part and beyond excited to share with the world!"

The band's last single, "Sister", acts as a love letter to New York City; lead singer Gomez captures the chaos, beauty, and sense of boundless possibility that their hometown has to offer. Gomez writes about and around the ever-changing landscape of the city, peering behind the veneer of gentrification to the pure humanity, spontaneity, and potential for serendipitous moments of connection that make the city a central inspiration for the band. Native Sun's new EP was recorded with Walter Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits, Rival Schools, Quicksand) and engineered by Jeremey Snyder (Fontaines D.C., IDLES).

No conversation about New York City rock'n'roll is complete without Native Sun. Fronted by Colombian-American songwriter Danny Gomez, the band makes cathartic and timeless songs that are undeniable. Along with drummer Nico Espinosa and bassist Justin Barry, their livewire local gigs are simultaneously welcoming and rowdy and it's made them a can't-miss fixture of city nightlife.

But on their latest EP Off With Our Heads, they've crafted their rawest and most resonant collection of songs yet. Produced by Walter Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand), the tracks burst with the kinetic energy of their live show but find Gomez singing about grief, his disillusionment with the world, and lovingly documenting the lives of the outcasts and misfits in his home.

Listen to the new single here:

From Native Sun's earliest days, the band has thrived on winning over new fans, building a scrappy but sizable following thanks to their unpredictable and chaotic sets at packed and sweaty clubs across town.

They've toured with White Reaper and Geese and shared the stage with bands like Sunflower Bean, Bodega, Gustaf, and Wavves. Barry even joined the band after one particularly raucous night as a fan in the middle of a Native Sun mosh-pit at Baby's All Right where he chipped a tooth.

But the past couple of years when concerts and a physical music community were paused allowed Gomez to reassess and focus on his songwriting. He locked himself in his Brooklyn apartment he shares with Barry and focused on writing a song a day for however long he could. He came out with material that's startlingly honest and unflinching in its intensity.

One of the tracks from these solitary sessions is "When She," written about Gomez's mother, who died from cancer in 2021. "Seeing somebody you love fade away inside and imagining what it must be like for her viewing the world but being totally paralyzed was what I couldn't stop thinking about while making this song," says Gomez.

Mining the records he loved as a kid like The Beatles' Revolver and the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Gomez sings over shimmering guitars, "And she looks at the rain / And she dances with the pain / Puts the sunrise in her eyes."

Though it's by far his most personal offering yet, Gomez wrote the song in a blistering and healing 30 minutes. "When Danny showed us that song, it was really emotional," says Barry. "Everyone in the band has lost a parent. It's all something we share and have bonded over."

To record these songs, Native Sun found a kindred spirit in producer Walter Schreifels, a legend in punk music who founded iconic bands like Quicksand, Rival Schools, and Gorilla Biscuits. Though Native Sun are far from a hardcore band, Gomez and Schreifels found common ground easily.

"He fell in love with our sound and we fell in love with him," says Gomez. "What inspired him to play music for the first time were the same things that inspired us too: The Ramones' Rocket to Russia, T. Rex's Electric Warrior, and the Stooges' Raw Power."

Recorded live straight to tape at Studio G in Brooklyn and engineered/mixed by Jeremy Snyder (Idles, Fontaines D.C., BAMBARA), songs like "Sister" are searing and confrontational, taking as many cues from Lou Reed as Martin Scorcese's After Hours. "With our sound, we're really trying to destroy that line between stadium rock and art rock - take out all the cheese and combine it with something more thoughtful and authentic," says Gomez.

Another highlight comes in the probing and incisive "There's Revolution.' On the track, Gomez wonders why and how radical ideas become commodified. He sings over a pummeling wall of fuzzed-out riffs, "That revolution / It's all I'm lusting for here / And we don't want it?"

Though it's uncompromising in its bleak assessment of America, Native Sun isn't pessimistic. In fact, on Off With Our Heads, the band found solace and hope in this pent-up energy and aggression from the sheer confusion of the world. With Gomez and Espinosa both immigrants from South America, their unique perspective has made rock music so quintessentially full-of-life and so quintessentially American: everyone is invited to the party.

"For us, music is do or die," says Gomez. "This is a band that doesn't repeat themselves but is still always themselves. We want timelessness over trends."

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