Now that the US President has flown the strangely familiar “Mission Accomplished” banner in the face of the two-and-a-half-year COVID-19 pandemic, hugely successful musicians can finally comfortably return to backing out of international tours due to the music industry’s rocky and quickly crumbling foundations, as was its status pre-pandemic. It may be this grim reality that eased Vancouver prog-experimentalists Blessed into revisiting the dark days of quarantine on their latest single from the forthcoming collection Circuitous, with “Agoraphobia” perfectly translating the anxiety of those directionless days into the, well, circuitous arrangements on the new track.
“Dealing with moments of panic and crisis is confusing for the people around you,” the band’s Drew Riekman shares. “Especially if you’re suffering from something that doesn’t have heft in the common day-to-day world. Wide open spaces and being far from home is generally exciting for most, and touring was a vehicle for me to feel that same feeling a lot of the time. But with so much home time, I was enveloped again with a sensation that makes little sense to anyone else, and attempted to open the door a little to that isolation.”
Between its pattering percussion, droning backing guitar, and lack of a cathartic chorus, the track feels trapped in an endless sprint—as illustrated in the visualizer which sees the record’s AI cover subject darting continuously down an unchanging hallway. Check that out below, and pre-order the record—out October 28 via Flemish Eye—here. Additionally, catch the band dodging agoraphobia on the road with Stuck at the dates listed here.
