New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The prolific Oakland-based singer-songwriter, Stephen Steinbrink has shared "Mom," the latest from his upcoming new album, Utopia Teased. Noisey, who premiered the song today, which features guest vocals from Jay Som's
Melina Duterte, is calling it "a Big Star-esque ballad... reflective of the complicated spirit at the heart of this record"
Between his stints as a touring member of Girlpool and Dear Nora's live bands, Utopia Teased, Steinbrink's 8th full-length album, was written and recorded in the wake of the
Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. Stunned with grief in the months that followed the fire, he bought a synthesizer, and locked himself in his shipping container studio, refusing to sleep for days as he worked on the album that would become Utopia Teased as a means of working through his overwhelming feelings of cynicism and loss.
Utopia Teased is available for pre-order now and due out November 9th via Western Vinyl and Melodic Records.
Additionally, Stephen Steinbrink has announced a west coast tour in December that includes dates with Lomelda and Advance Base. All dates below.
Utopia Teased is Stephen Steinbrink's followup to his critically acclaimed 2016 album Anagrams. Unlike the pristine production of Anagrams, on Utopia Teased, Steinbrink embraces the rough edges, as he shifts his focus from the craft of production to the art of processing and capturing his experiences with honesty. He explains, "I was driving the preamps a little too hard, mixing down to tape, bouncing back to the computer, and repeating the process over and over again. I wanted it to reflect how fried my brain felt at the time, totally pulverized. The songs just poured out of me, it hardly felt like work to make them up. It was like turning on a spigot. I don't write often, maybe once or twice a year, but when I do, a lot comes out. To me my craft is less about putting in the hours physically playing music - the real work is getting my soul right so that when the holy wave of pure creative energy moves over your house, it will recognize you as worthy enough. If it does, maybe it'll give you a song."
"Empty Vessel" and "Maximum Sunlight" both sung from perspective of residents of Tonopah, Nevada, were written to accompany a book about the town, by Steinbrink's friend Meagan Day. The sparse imagery on "Empty Vessel," ostensibly about a semi-transient lock-picking truck driver, feels at least semi-autobiographical as Steinbrink sings "You're 31, you don't believe in anything...If you don't stop moving you'll never get hurt." His evocative lyrics continue to intrigue on "Maximum Sunlight" as he sings "Sleeping through the night in the drained pool / I said I love you to a fool" from the perspective of a 30-year-old alcoholic ATV enthusiast. Much of his outlook on life is captured on the elegiac waltz "Zappa Dream," (originally written and recorded by his friend Rosie Steffy) on which he sings, "Dreams are so fucked up / Even the really good ones...Would it be such a bad thing / To be finished with living?...Everyone preserves a myth / Guards it like a bone / You see it in your lover's eyes / But never in your own...There is a magic on this earth / In cats and clouds and cars / For everything that you call "real" / Was once the dust of stars / Yeah you have been a river rock / And a drop of rain / And with any bit of luck / You'll be those things again / Are you in love with your life or a dream / Or just overwhelmed/ Wondering what this could possibly mean?" At the close of the, too-little-too-late acoustic narrative "Mom", guest vocalist
Melina Duterte of Jay Som joins him in conjuring a memory of listening to extraterrestrial radio, drifting asleep in a suburban
Phoenix Wal-Mart parking lot. The album's heartbreaking closer "I'm Never Changing Who You Are" continues Steinbrink's recollection of his adolescence, asking an unnamed family member "Will you try to love more than you did?" while soberly accepting his reality.
In an interview with North of the Internet, Steinbrink recalled a video he came across on his phone, which was taken the day after the fire, "It sent me spiraling and thinking, it's almost been a year. Nothing really felt actual those weeks, and I could only only react to the future at a remove because the horror of everything was inescapably tying me to the present. The idea of doing laundry or driving across the bridge to San Francisco to work was too abstract, so I just didn't do it. I hardly did anything. Two days after the fire I woke up, walked to P.'s porch and sat there for hours alone and cried without a jacket on until the sun started going down. Geese were flying across power lines at dusk and I took a video of them on my phone. I imagined one of the birds was my friend." In the same interview, he goes on to share some insight provided by a friend he reached out to when trying to finalize the album: "Finishing the thing puts a limit around something that comes from an infinite well; this is uncomfortable." True.
TOUR DATES:
12/01 - Seattle, WA @ Woodland Theater
12/02 - Olympia, WA @ Hobbit Hole *
12/04 - Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater #
12/06 - Phoenix, AZ @
Rebel Lounge %
12/11 - San Francsico, CA @ Hotel Utah ^
# w/ Lomelda, Musical Tracing & Wizard Apprentice
* w/ Wolfgang Strutz
% w/ Sean Bonnette (of AJJ)
^ w/ Advance Base & Lisa/Liza
STEPHEN STEINBRINK - UTOPIA TEASED
WESTERN VINYL / MELODIC RECORDS
NOVEMBER 9, 2018
1. Bad Love
2. I Wanna Be Free
3. A Part of Me is a Part of You
4. Empty Vessel
5. Maximum Sunlight
6. Zappa Dream
7. Coming Down
8. Mom
9. In Another Kind of Dream
10. Become Sphere
11. You Could Always Leave
12. I'm Never Changing Who You Are
