READY FOR SUMMER MURDER-Y GOODNESS?INDIE POP FIVESOME MY KID BROTHER SHARE “HIGH SOCIETY” — WATCH
HAPPY.MAD.WEIRD.SAD OUT OCTOBER 7 VIA FEARLESS RECORDS
BAND TOURING WITH THE DANGEROUS SUMMER + LIKE PACIFIC THIS FALL
Leesburg, Virginia-based band My Kid Brother, who have been praised and featured by Billboard, Alternative Press, American Songwriter, and their hometown paper The Loudoun Times-Mirror, will release their debut full length album Happy.Mad.Weird.Sad on October 7 via Fearless Records. Pre-order it here.
Today, they released the video for “High Society.” Watch it here.
It’s a “murder-y” and grainy pseudo doc! Think ’80s slasher — with shadowy figures wearing mask and wielding weapons, all set to upbeat alt pop. Think slasher film — if Judd Apatow did slasher films. It follows the band’s prior blood-soaked video for “Spilt Salt,” which paid homage to heavy metal’s oft-sanguine imagery.
Put simply, “High Society” is a song about swallowing your own ego.
“We wrote ‘High Society’ in two parts, broken down by verse and chorus,” the band explains. “In the verse, we give an uncensored opinion of the ‘money/fame’ hubris. In the chorus, we accept the dive into that social strata and try to rationalize why.”
After much enthusiasm that helped foster the band’s self-titled, 2021-released EP, My Kid Brother are branching out. The band rose up out of Leesburg with a singular sound reflective of the city’s small-town intimacy, yet wildly ambitious all at once. The indie pop quintet fuses warm keys, wistful psychedelic melodies, off-kilter guitar, wiry grooves, iridescent harmonies, and vocal interplay. Happy.Mad.Weird.Sad, recorded with producer Eric Palmquist (Thrice, Bad Suns, Mutemath), builds on their EP’s polished, hooky rock with heavier riffs (“Roots”) and thicker grooves (“High Society”), colorful and quirky arrangements, lyrics that span stalker tales to unfiltered love songs, and choruses that punch with a newfound intensity (“Shoulders”).
As the story goes, Neonakis and drummer Sam Athanas worked together at a local restaurant back in 2015. After meeting guitarist Dylan Savopoulos, they began jamming before inviting bassist/guitarist Richard Smith into the fold. The lineup cemented upon Piano Whitman‘s addition as vocalist/keyboardist/synths in October 2018. Beyond music, their bonds even extend to their respective living situations. Their friendship is the backbone of their musical unit, as well.
And that fosters the creative surge on Happy.Mad.Weird.Sad. It isn’t surprising, given the amount of work they spent building up to it. The band members —who still live in and around the small-ish town of Leesburg, located roughly 40 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.— had plenty of time to think (and occasionally overthink) their songs, with the pandemic having stifled their early momentum. Even though the world shut down as the band was getting its legs under it, My Kid brother garnered media support and critical acclaim from key media outlets like American Songwriter, Billboard, The Noise, Guitar World, and Alternative Press, the latter of which christened them one of 100 Artists You Need To Know.
HAPPY.MAD.WEIRD.SAD TRACK LISTING:
“Never Break Your Heart”
“Make You Make Believe”
“Disco Days”
“Paper Houses”
“Roots”
“Shoulders”
“Come Back Down”
“Split Salt”
“High Society”
“Gasoline”
“Cortisol”
The band will hit the road again this fall with The Dangerous Summer and Like Pacific. All dates are below.
MY KID BROTHER ON TOUR:
WITH THE DANGEROUS SUMMER + LIKE PACIFIC:
10/22 — Denver, CO — Marquis Theater
10/23 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Beehive
10/25 — Las Vegas, NV — The Usual Place
10/27 — Bakersfield, CA — Temblor
10/28 — San Francisco, CA — Milk Bar
10/29 — Anaheim, CA — Chain Reaction
10/30 — West Hollywood, CA — Roxy
11/1 — San Diego, CA — Voodoo Room at the House of Blues SD
11/2 — Phoenix, AZ — The Rebel Lounge
11/4 — Fort Worth, TX — Ridglea Theater
11/5 — Austin, TX — Spiderhouse Ballroom
11/6 — San Antonio, TX — Vibes Underground
11/8 — Orlando, FL — Henao Center
11/9 — West Palm Beach, FL — Respectable Street
11/11 — Atlanta, GA — Vinyl
11/12 — Nashville, TN — The End
11/13 — Columbus, OH — Ace of Cups
11/14 — Pittsburgh, PA — Crafthouse
11/15 — Baltimore, MD — Metro Gallery
11/17 — Easton, PA — Once Centre Square
11/18 — Teaneck, NJ — Debonair Music Hall
11/19 — Amityville, NY — Amityville Music Hall
11/20 — Brooklyn, NY — Elsewhere – Zone One
11/22 — Ferndale, MI — The Loving Touch
11/23 — Toronto, ON — Velvet Underground
11/25 — Lakewood, OH — Mahall’s
11/26 — Chicago, IL — Beat Kitchen
MY KID BROTHER ARE:
Christian Neonakis — Vocals, Guitar, Bass
Piano Whitman — Vocals, Piano, Synths
Dylan Savopoulos — Guitar, Backing Vocals
Richard Smith — Bass, Guitar
Sam Athanas — Drums
