Any album concept that originates with middle fingers positioned at its creators’ primary instruments is bound to be an interesting listen. Noise rockers Open Head approached their second album What Is Success with an open head (well, an open mind) as they processed the question behind the project’s title with a newly industrialized palette reflecting the city-itself-is-a-character trope inherent to any film set in NYC. As a result, the broader post-punk and brutal-prog sounds of 2022’s Joy, and Other Sufferings give way to a sense of urban alienation specific to the city’s no-wave scene of yore.
Before the new LP lands in January, we’re getting another single from it today in the form of “N.Y. Frills,” a droning, clanging, industrial-punk tune simmering with rage at the city’s jaw-dropping income disparity. “The song describes Open Head’s relationship with New York City in general—one of both proximity and distance, where the city is always within reach, yet the band is always a visitor, an outsider to its tempo, its density, and its size,” the group shared of the new single, which they refer to as an homage to the city’s no-wave scene and as “an encounter with the monotone Goliath that is Manhattan.”
“Our guitarist Brandon Minnervini sings the song,” they continue, “and, together with bassist Jon McCarthy, he wrote it while working for a fabrication business in Kingston, sanding designer aluminum shelving,” the band shares. “Every so often, Brandon would be tasked with delivering the products to ultra-wealthy patrons in New York City. A drive that started at a dusty Kingston warehouse would end in the alien opulence of a Manhattan penthouse, or a private AI sports betting club, or a ‘development workshop’ full of untouched fabrication machines occupying prime Manhattan real estate, and then back again.”
Check out the tune below, and pre-order What Is Success here.
