Endure

Description

New Orleans no-wave punks Special Interest will release Endure, their third album and Rough Trade Records debut, on Friday, November 4th, 2022.

On every level, Special Interest is uncompromising: in their adventurous sound, their high-energy live performances, and their convictions. Dance music and punk culture have flirted in the warehouse before, but Special Interests desire to dismantle genre is informed by a larger abolitionist worldview that resists constraint, category, and conformity. Their music is a soundtrack to dancing the pain away as much as raging against the machine.

Special Interest describes the experience of recording Endure as inverted, since the pandemic obviously stunted the possibilities of live performance, resulting in a new period of experimentation and sonic exploration in which old rules were cast out. Everything the group writes springs from the same source a hard-hitting drum machine beat but the possibilities are endless and the outcome always unpredictable. Ruth Mascellis work on drum machines and synthesizers provides a foundation, as varying beats lead the group into different directions: rave-ready drum and bass or ballroom-like house on the more dancefloor-friendly cuts, and marching kicks on No Wave-inflected tracks like Foul. Cherry Blue Intention brings together a sturdy post-punk bassline, shrieking guitar effects, and a jungle breakbeat into a driving anthem of an opening track.

The new songs recall the art rock of Sparks and The B-52s as much as politically-minded punk, and on Midnight Legend, the group is more overtly pop than ever before making something fun during a time of frequent sadness became a central priority. But that doesnt mean anything is simple or surface-level, with a darkness often treading beneath the smooth production. For as much as the band plays with dissonance, Maria Elenas expressive guitar work and Nathan Cassianis grooving bass lines effortlessly weave together, and shade out the soundscape brought into existence by Alli Logouts commanding vocal presence. Collaboration is central to the bands creative process, and its difficult to imagine even one element from the whole of Special Interest subtracted from the equation. Their songs are living organisms, open to the possibility of experimentation and interpretation, but also not the property or creation of any one person.