BEEN STELLAR
ANNOUNCE DEBUT ALBUM
OUT JUNE 14TH VIA DIRTY HIT
SHARE LEAD SINGLE “PASSING JUDGMENT”
SPRING EUROPEAN TOUR WITH THE 1975
Been Stellar have announced their highly anticipated debut album, Scream From New York, NY, out June 14th via their new label home Dirty Hit. Lead single “Passing Judgment” is a heart-racing post-punk barnstormer, a masterful deployment of unbearable pressure and violent relief that clearly reveals the band’s years of playing together. Later this month the band will embark on a European tour supporting The 1975.
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 like Sonic Youth and Interpol, as well as 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 underneath.
“We were finishing “Passing Judgment” in the midst of our first tour in the UK. Playing through it a bit differently each show, we were learning to look at the song from different angles. The recording feels live because of this process — there’s a chaotic feeling in the drums and bass that wouldn’t be there if we hadn’t finished writing it live,” shares lead vocalist Sam Slocum, “Lyrically I was thinking about why we judge the world around us, and how passing judgment on someone or something is usually rooted in being unsure in oneself.”
Pre-order the album on vinyl, CD and cassette from Dirty Hit HERE.
WATCH “PASSING JUDGMENT” VIDEO
Been Stellar are no strangers to the road, having toured extensively and supported like minded artists like Fontaines DC, Shame & Interpol, honing the livewire sound that’s exhibited across their debut. After a surprise NYC headline last week, the band will depart for Europe later this month, where they’ll support labelmates The 1975 on a run of stadium and arena shows. Tickets available HERE.
Tour Dates
Mar 1 – Paris, FR @ Le Zénith*
Mar 2 – Amsterdam, NE @ AFAS LIVE* SOLD OUT
Mar 3 – Brussels, BE @ Forest National*
Mar 5 – Hamburg, DE @ Barclays Arena*
Mar 7 – Oslo, NO @ Oslo Spektrum*
Mar 8 – Stockholm, SE @ Annexet*
Mar 10 – Copenhagen, DK @ KB Hallen* SOLD OUT
Mar 12 – Berlin, DE @ Mercedes-Benz Arena*
Mar 13 – Warsaw, PL @ Torwar Hall*
Mar 14 – Prague, CZ @ Fortuna Hall*
Mar 16 – Zurich, CH @ Hallenstadion Zurich*
Mar 18 – Munich, DE @ Zenith* SOLD OUT
Mar 19 – Milan, IT @ Mediolanum Forum*
Mar 21 – Frankfurt, DE @ Jahrhunderthalle* SOLD OUT
Mar 22 – Cologne, DE @ Palladium* SOLD OUT
Mar 24 – Amsterdam, NE @ AFAS Live* SOLD OUT
May 4 – Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees
May 15 – Southampton, UK @ Joiners
May 16 – Brighton, UK @ The Great Escape
May 18 – Amsterdam, NL @ London Calling
May 20 – Bristol, UK @ The Louisiana
May 22 – Manchester, UK @ YES (basement)
May 23 – London, UK @ The Lexington
July 26 – Sheffield, UK @ Tramlines Fest
July 27 – Oxfordshire, UK @ Truck Fest
July 28 – Suffolk, UK @ Latitude Festival
*supporting The 1975
Tracklist:
01 Start Again
03 Pumpkin
04 Scream From New York, NY
05 Sweet
06 Can’t Look Away
07 Shimmer
08 Takedown
09 All In One
10 I Have The Answer
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 so many other dyed-in-the-wool New York bands, Been Stellar are transplants. Guitarist Skyler Knapp and vocalist Sam Slocum first met in their freshman year of high school a decade ago; members of the cross country team, they bonded over the band t-shirt Skyler was wearing and decided to start jamming together. In Michigan, they started 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 coalesce. Despite working in wildly disparate styles – Nando and Skyler bonded over British bands like The Cribs; Nico was making electronic music, and Laila rave – the group bonded over a shared sense of humor, forming a motley crew based more on emotional compatibility than any rigid ideas of shared artistic sensibility.
In many ways, the band formed to fill a need: by the time Been Stellar found themselves in New York, the last vestiges of the city’s famed 2000s and 2010s DIY underground had been ground down to nothing. The scenes that did exist felt impenetrable. So the band put on their own shows, renting spaces and collaborating with friends to build the world they wanted to inhabit.
Determined to break new sonic ground, the band 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 producer Dan Carey (black midi, Wet Leg) 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: Been Stellar’s 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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