Just a few weeks after Pete Willson and Ethan Toenjes released their debut dual single as Feller, the Chicago-based musicians are already prepping for the unveiling of their first collection of songs, with their Universal Miracle Worker EP dropping this Friday. Traversing sounds familiar to the current slacker-rock revival (I can only assume they’re Thinking Fellers) while leaning into ominous areas of slowcore pioneered by Duster, the record still promises plenty of surprises with its four remaining unreleased tracks, considering that the previously shared “Sand Sandwich” evolved into proggy riffing in its final moments and lead single “New Cotton” was composed of jagged, fairly mathy post-punk guitars.
To further complicate things, new single “Jokes on You” brings two more trendy sounds into the fold, with a jammy take on grunge occasionally swerving into the lane of country. “‘Jokes on You’ was just one of the jams that stuck [while] messing around in the rehearsal space,” shares Willson, whose cool vocals land somewhere between a less-butt-rock-inspiring Eddie Vedder and the loungey croons of Alex Turner on the new track. “It was [always] just instrumental, but we decided to put some vocals on it last-minute. I wrote the lyrics there in the studio and put some drawl on my voice, so we like to call it our country song—kind of like grunge-country, ’cause it’s slow and heavy. I don’t know altogether if there’s an inherent meaning to the song, but I felt the lyrics created a good feel and further dug into the ominous character of the melody—kind of like a nice dark car ride in the country.”
The track arrives with a video created by Ben Burkhardt that features the duo jamming in their practice space—check that out below.
