It’s only been 16 months since we last got an album from the Bay Area post-punks Cold Beat, but packed into that year-and-change was plenty of development for the band (as with the rest of us). The first single from the newly announced War Garden is rife with the longing we all felt upon our first or second or fiftieth Zoom meeting with close friends and family we knew we wouldn’t see for quite some time.
“I had spent many months toiling in the dirt, tending to my war garden,” shares the band’s Hannah Lew, explaining the title of the album and the root of the songs’ themes. “Working with the soil is so hopeful, but also morbid. I had to bury some bulbs instead of being able to be present for the burial of a close friend. It became almost fetishistic to bury seeds, like a physical way to be there without actually being able to be there.”
This first track from the release, “See You Again,” recalls the coldwave heard on the band’s past releases, while there’s certainly a hint of optimism in its anticipatory, pulsing electronics and blissful chorus. Paired with a foggy visual depicting the band shedding the screen-like distance between them, the track is a welcome new chapter for the band to match the welcome new chapter in our lives. “Among people on set I know there was a sense of transcendence—just a moment to give form to the feelings of isolation and physical need for each other that had built up,” Lew adds.
Watch the clip below, and expect War Garden out September 17 on Like LTD.
