Off-kilter rhythms and dissonant melodies, krautrock meets punk on the way to jazz school, a vibrant lantern in a dark night of the soul…meet the latest creation from STRAW MAN ARMY. It’s called Earthworks and it’s out on November 15th via La Vida Es Un Mus Discos — pre-order it here. Earthworks completes their trilogy of records that started with Age of Exile and then SOS; a past, present, and future of a flailing nation project that will be a blip on the historical timeline of humanity — just hopefully not the last blip. Actually after watching the most recent Madison Square rally, I wouldn’t be so mad if it was the last blip, because goddamn the population is racing down the toilet fast. At least I have this record to carry me into the uncertain days ahead, it’s driving percussion and addictive guitar lines reminding me that if I’m the insane one, there’s others out here seeing through the madness with me. And the lyrics really are poetry, the kind that confronts us with our own delusion and apathy and helplessness so we can wake up and refuse to participate in the fuckery all around us. Listen to their first two singles, “Look Alive” and “Extinction Burst” here:
“Earthworks” is an album that holds and subverts many contradictions—juggling the weight of melancholy, grief, guilt, impunity, and the yearning for clarity against the backdrop of boiling wrath; the wrath of nature, the occupied, the dispossessed, and of the mind against itself. To quote the track “Spiral” — “Is this all that’s left for us these days? / Apathy and rage?”— Straw Man Army offers this record as a companion to our frustration, our sickness, our despair, and a lifeline for our fugitive attention in the struggle for peace.
