Boston has been a breeding ground for innovative noise rock since Black Francis begged for repentance in 1987. Something about those ravenous nor’easters seems to cultivate an erratic temperament in the city’s musicians that results in an auditory havoc nearly proportional to those of Beantown’s winter storms, injecting a grit into the most digestible of Kim Deal outlets. While this trend reached a clear apotheosis somewhere around the turn of the century, the subsequent comedown—largely archived by Brooklyn label Exploding in Sound—has been just as exhilarating to observe.
In the wake of notable releases by moody Bostonians Bad History Month and Pile in 2017, EIS’s Kal “Did you mean: Karl Marx” Marks are kicking off 2018 with their follow-up to 2016’s predictably glum manifesto Life is Alright, Everybody Dies with the (nominally) more upbeat Universal Care. Today the band is sharing the third preview from the album, the grandiose finale, “Today I Walked Down to the Tree, Read a Book, and When I Was Done I Went Back Inside.” Despite vocalist Carl Shane’s frequent lapse into Black-Franciscan snarls throughout Care, “Today I Walked…” proves an apt handle for the climax to this profoundly bored apocalypse: When the music lilts, swells, then pummels, Shane remains unflapped, delivering each line with a matter-of-fact recitation. It’s heavy, bleak, and oddly cathartic—not unlike the first day of relatively mild temperatures after a week of unnavigable winter storms.
Check out the music behind the William-Carlos-Williams-approved title below:
Universal Care is out February 23 on Exploding in Sound.
