**American Motors announces new album Functional Music out 6th November**

Share lead single/music video for “No Horses“

On tour with onelinedrawing in October

American Motors by Mark Dalrymple

American Motors, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania group, have announced their second album, Functional Music, out 6th November via three labels, Expert Work (US), The Ghost Is Clear (US) and Vina Records (ITA). Alongside the news, the band have shared lead single “No Horses” paired with a music video shot on film inside the Large Scale Systems Museum in New Kensington, PA.

The duo picked up press support from Stereogum and more, appearing in a number of end-of-year lists across, for their striking 2024 debut, Content and made their follow-up with their good friend and post-hardcore luminary J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines) at Magpie Cage. It’s a studio with pedigree; Shudder to Think, Girls Against Boys and Brainiac all recorded there, and the band leans into that history, treating the studio itself as an instrument rather than just a place to track a record.

Where their debut Content built out a world in decay, Functional Music is about the people stuck living in it: waitresses, nomads, kids growing up too fast and dosed on catastrophe before they’re old enough to understand it. The band has pointed to New Hollywood cinema – Peckinpah, Easy Rider, Bogdanovich – as a reference point, each song written like a scene where the mundane tips into something bigger.

Listen to “No Horses” HERE
Watch video for “No Horses” HERE
Pre-order Functional Music HERE

Guitarist Dustin White has spent years as an “indie lifer”, playing in or running front-of-house for Pink Mountaintops, Times New Viking, Sea Wolf, and Dead Meadow, and Functional Music is where that decades-deep music-lifer perspective finally sits up front and takes the wheel. There’s also a strong sense of place running through the band’s writing: White grew up in West Virginia, and songs like “5480 Big Tyler” (named after a slum-lord apartment complex from his childhood) sit alongside a real vein of Appalachian detail across their catalogue.

On the new album, Dustin White of the band said: “Making the first record, we established a conceptual framework to work inside of. This time we’re adding more detail inside that framework, and pushing against it slightly. We made some bigger swings in a few spots, but still just did what we do, which is basically whatever Alex and I find interesting. We’re still interested in experimenting with empty space and repetition. Working with J again was an absolute dream, and no band I’ve been in has managed to release a second LP while still continuing to function as a band, so this feels like a major accomplishment. It’s a little more interior to the exterior of the first LP. It’s a society, and we’re just living in it.”

Directed and shot by Dustin White himself, the “No Horses” video plays out inside real, working vintage computer terminals and mainframes at the Large Scale Systems Museum, shot on an Arriflex 16ST with expired Kodak Eastman film stock. White taught himself the camera from scratch for the job, sourcing the second hand gear and shooting test reels to learn it before turning it on the band. Grey filing cabinets, men in suits and a haze of grainy, dated footage give the whole thing the feel of an office lifted straight out of the late 80s – a fitting, faded backdrop for a record so preoccupied with the gap between how things were and how they turned out.

Among the machines featured is a Data General “Dasher” terminal, the same model used as the visual template for the computers in Apple TV’s “Severance,” alongside genuine period hardware including a VAX-11/780 and an IBM System/390 mainframe.

Speaking on the video, Dustin continued: “‘No Horses’ takes place mostly out on Route 60 just outside St Albans, WV, the same stretch that ‘(A Billboard Reading) Dissolve Jefferson’ from our first LP does. As a band, one of our favorite things to do is have either the guitar or bass play essentially one note while the other moves around. Here we do both. For the video, we were lucky enough to shoot at the Large Scale Systems Museum, just outside Pittsburgh. Everybody should go here and touch these machines; they want you to. To keep with the antiquated technology vibe, we shot the whole thing on a 1960s Arriflex 16ST 16mm camera. I’m honestly surprised we pulled it off.”

American Motors will also be heading out on the road this October, joining Jonah Matranga’s onelinedrawing – the long-running project of the former Far frontman, who will be touring his album “Tin Cans With Strings to You” in its entirety for its 30th anniversary – for a run of East Coast dates:

American Motors live:

22 October – Boston, MA @ Rockwell – Tickets *
23 October – Syracuse, NY @ Funky Town Comics & Vinyl – Tickets *
24 October – Long Island, NY @ Massapequa VFW Hall –Tickets with dearly departed *
25 October – Rutherford, NJ @ Williams Center – Tickets with soft no *
26 October – Baltimore, MD @ Metro – Tickets with Knub *
28 October – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie – Tickets with dear forgiven *