When we last checked in with rocker/visual artist/podcaster Brett Newski, he was releasing a single in collaboration with The Verve Pipe’s Brian Van Der Ark after the two hit it off on Newski’s Dirt From the Road podcast. In the time since, Newski and his band have announced a full album’s worth of such collaborations, naturally titled Friend Rock, arriving April 7 featuring additional contributions from artists spanning the globe. The latest of these singles arrives today with “Chemicals,” which features one of Newski’s biggest musical influences, Matthew Caws, and pulls from the same breezy vein of late-’90s alt-rock as Caws’ band Nada Surf. “‘Chemicals’ is a hard-driving indie-pop smasher that illuminates how love can be the strongest vice,” Newski shares of the track.
Additionally, “Chemicals” arrives with a lo-fi video superimposing Newski over some of the most powerful images associated with our country in the past hundred years—the Vietnam War, the moon landing, Regan’s attempted assassination, Randy Johnson whipping an absolute heater at a bird. “The VHS style video time-travels us into the past, where I punch Hitler, party at Woodstock, join the band Queen, and get tracked by the CIA in the JFK debacle,” he adds. Pretty sure those were all deleted scenes from Forrest Gump.
You can find the video below and their busy tour schedule here. Pre-order Friend Rock here.
