BEN STELLAR
PUMPKIN // NEW SINGLE // OUT NOW // WATCH
SCREAM FROM NEW YORK, NY // DEBUT LP // 21 JUNE
UK & EU HEADLINE TOUR // NOVEMBER & DECEMBER
PHOTO CREDIT: GABE LONG
“A raw and magnetic sound that strikes mercilessly” PASTE MAGAZINE
“Angsty, gritty, sultry indie rock territory that recalls Gentleman-era Afghan Whigs” BROOKLYN VEGAN
“A glowing, crackling set of songs that balances moments of frenzied melancholy with moments of chaos and urgency” ALT PRESS
BEEN STELLAR have released their newest single, PUMPKIN, the last pre-release single ahead of the band’s debut album Scream From New York, NY out on 21 June via their new label home Dirty Hit.
“Pumpkin is something of a sonic departure for us – it’s definitely more subdued,” says lead singer Sam Slocum. “There was a point when we weren’t totally sure it would make it onto the album because of that. It had existed in many forms, but it wasn’t until the last month leading up to recording when each part fell into place. Oddly, the lyrics remained the same from the very beginning. They stemmed from a visual I had – an apartment light shining through its windows out onto a street at night. I imagined the people inside the apartment crossing back and forth in front of the window. From there, the lyrics I wrote formed a vignette of the people in the apartment, sharing a space together. I described several shared, intimate moments from my own life and wanted to get as specific as I could.”
The band have previously shared three singles from the album – the white-knuckled and cutting Sweet, the ferocious late-album highlight All In One and lead single Passing Judgment, a masterful deployment of unbearable pressure and violent relief.
Scream From New York, NY is a remarkably brutal debut – bruised and volatile, it captures an image of ‘20s New York that’s unrelenting and harsh, where tenderness is a finite resource burned up by the machinery of the city and human connection is a luxury product. Leaving behind the driving shoegaze of their early recordings, the NYC-based five piece tap into the disaffected sound and spirit of New York luminaries such as Sonic Youth and Interpol, and the nihilistic, yearning cool of Iceage and Bends-era Radiohead, striking upon a sound that’s fearsome, buffeting and beautiful at the same time. A tidal wave as viewed from beneath.
Pre-order the album on vinyl, CD and cassette from Dirty Hit HERE
SCREAM FROM NEW YORK, NY TRACK LIST
- Start Again
- Passing Judgement
- Pumpkin
- Scream From New York, NY
- Sweet
- Can’t Look Away
- Simmer
- Takedown
- All In One
- I Have The Answer
Been Stellar recently spent the spring on a major European tour supporting The 1975 and are currently close to completing their own sold out headline UK tour. They will then play three major UK festivals – Tramlines, Truck and Latitude – before heading back to the States for their Lollapalooza debut ahead of their North American tour supporting Fontaines D.C. They then return to the UK and Europe for an extensive headline tour where they will perform their largest UK show to date at the Scala in London.
BEEN STELLAR UK & EU DATES
JULY
Fri 26 SHEFFIELD Tramlines Festival
Sat 27 OXFORD Truck Festival
Sun 28 SUFFOLK Latitude Festival
NOVEMBER
Sun 03 AMSTERDAM, NL Bitterzoet
Mon 04 COLOGNE, DE Blue Shell
Wed 06 BERLIN, DE Cassiopeia
Thu 07 HAMBURG, DE Molotow Sky Bar
Sat 09 WARSAW, PL Klub Hybrydy
Sun 10 PRAGUE, CZ Café V Lese
Mon 11 MUNICH, DE Orange House
Wed 13 MILAN, IT Bellezza
Thu 14 ZURICH, CH Exil
Sat 16 BRUSSELS, BE Witloof Bar
Sun 17 PARIS, FR Point Ephemere
Tue 19 BRISTOL Fleece
Thu 21 MANCHESTER Academy 3
Fri 22 GLASGOW King Tuts
Sun 24 NEWCASTLE Cluny
Mon 25 LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Tue 26 NOTTINGHAM Bodega
Thu 28 LONDON Scala
Sat 30 DUBLIN Workman’s Club
DECEMBER
Sun 01 GALWAY Roisin Dubh
Mon 02 BELFAST Ulster Sports Club
As its wry title implies, Scream From New York, NY is a record about what happens when language fails – between friends, partners, a city and its citizens – and the primal scream you might let out when words just don’t work anymore.
Like many other dyed-in-the-wool New York bands, Been Stellar are transplants. Guitarist Skyler Knapp and vocalist Sam Slocum first met in their fresher’s year of high school a decade ago; members of the cross-country team, they bonded over a t-shirt Skyler was wearing and decided to start jamming together. In Michigan, they began performing under the Been Stellar name, but it wasn’t until the pair began studying at NYU and met Brazilian-born guitarist Nando Dale, bass player Nico Brunstein and drummer Laila Wayans that a sound started to form. Despite working in wildly disparate styles – Nando and Skyler shared a love of British bands like The Cribs; Nico was making electronic music and Laila rave – the group bonded over a shared sense of humour, forming a motley crew based more on emotional compatibility than any rigid ideas of a shared artistic sensibility.
Determined to break new sonic ground, they embarked on a relentless practice schedule, even renting scrappy studios on days off during tours with Fontaines DC and Shame. After befriending him at SXSW the band tapped up producer Dan Carey (Wet Leg, black midi, Squid) to help coalesce the disparate elements of their sound that had been percolating: forceful, driving physicality; pop classicism; gnarled beauty; and a rich emotional core.
The resulting 10-song album announces Been Stellar as gimlet-eyed chroniclers of contemporary youth, staring through noise and confusion into the dark heart of modern life. These songs embody the spirit of a city that makes and breaks its inhabitants on a daily basis – an irony befitting the album’s tone: their preternatural ability to capture the disconnection that haunts New York with photorealist detail might just be the thing that vaults them into its pantheon.
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