Local post-punk two-piece Ed Schrader’s Music Beat is back with a new single, “Dunce,” the first song off the group’s forthcoming album “Riddles,” due out March 2 on Carpark Records.
But as the below video, which premiered over at Noisey, shows, the post-punk label may no longer apply. “Dunce” feels looser, haunted and more fuzzed-out compared to the band’s previous work, which saw them veer from constructing tightly wound two-minute garage rock freak-outs to minimalist grooves over which Schrader would croon. Noisey’s Param Anand Singh assures the rest of the record “only gets stranger from here.”
The video, featuring Schrader and bassist Devlin Rice cruising around a dark, mostly empty New York City in a classic Thunderbird, at points feels like a visual homage to the roadway imagery of David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” a fitting reference given that Schrader seems to be channeling some of the more elastic vocal tones of ’90s-era Bowie, one of Schrader’s idols who also contributed the song “I’m Deranged” to the film’s soundtrack.
“For me, the album parallels feelings of confronting the past, resolving it, facing the music, and blasting out of it,” Scharder said in a release from the label. “It’s the album our hearts wanted us to make.”
As Noisey reports, Baltimore electronic musician Dan Deacon was brought on to produce the record and eventually ended up co-writing it.
Ed Schrader’s Music Beat will play a release show for “Riddles” at Metro Gallery on March 1. See the cover for “Riddles” and full tracklist below.
1. Dunce
2. Seagull
3. Riddles
4. Dizzy Devil
5. Wave To The Water
6. Rust
7. Kid Radium
8. Humbucker Blues
9. Tom
10. Culebra
