“I don’t want to see 30 / I don’t want to get married / I just want to stay hungry / I just want to stay bold.”
That’s Brat Sounds singer Scott Cary in the opening seconds of “See Thirty,” a standout track from the new Bad Luck. But lest you think Cary is full of nothing but youthful bravado, he immediately pivots to this: “When I think of the time spent / Getting drunk in the basement / You could be the replacement / For the years I’ve been wasting.”
That snarky-but-sentimental streak is par for the course on Bad Luck, Brat Sounds’ first full-length record in four years. Opener “Systematically Broken” is a frantic and fuzzed-out rocker that lives up to its title; “Motortrend” changes gears and delivers a gorgeous meditation on “the precious little time that we have”; and “Soil” equates settling down with dying and returning to the earth. (But in a good way!) Elsewhere, Carey and company channel their former Dinny Bulca quirks on hilarious songs like “Mona Lisa Frank” and closer “Algae.” There’s even time for a rowdy run-through of “Sloop John B.”
As for the recording of the album, Cary tells us…
“I made demos of all these songs over the summer of 2016 and then showed them to the band. Since then, we have polished them into the songs you’d hear on the album. Over the summer of 2017, I built a little DIY studio in my basement with a soundproofed room. We recorded the updated versions of all the songs there. All of the band members switch instruments from track to track; whoever could play it best played on the track.”
Brat Sounds will celebrate the release of Bad Luck tonight at High Dive. Dig in and stream the album below.