Within the independent music world, there's been a growing enthusiasm this year for Historic New Jersey, a recording collective and/or record label in Philadelphia making retro-tinted pop-rock, scrappy yet finely crafted, familiar but seemingly beamed in from an alternate timeline. The hype started to build in February, when Emily Moales graced us with her brilliant Star Moles album Highway To Hell, and it intensified this summer, when siblings Sam and Louise Sullivan released their charming and inspired Love & Devotion. Kevin Basko, whose home studio plays host to all this creation, has been regularly name-dropped in coverage of these projects, and it's left me wondering when we'd get a potential breakthrough release from his own project, Rubber Band Gun. Without notice, that time has come.
A whole new Rubber Band Gun album called Bloodwork materialized online Wednesday night. It of course features ample contributions from Moales and the Sullivans, and if you're into the classic, slightly off-kilter vibe supplied by those artists, you'll find a lot to love in Basko's work too. He sings with subtle conversational swagger, slightly detached yet never lacking in conviction, mostly hanging out in his lower register, not unlike Nate Amos. The arrangements are loose and lovely. Sam Sullivan's lead guitar on "Carlo" is especially appealing, and the album wouldn't be what it is without the backing vocals from Moales and Louise Sullivan throughout.
And like his talented friends, Basko litters his songs with memorable lyrics. "Zombie In The Country" alone is full of quotable pop culture references that situate Rubber Band Gun in the present despite its out-of-time qualities. I can't decide which sequence I like better: "We found love in a homeless place/ We found blood where the bulls parade/ Think I get what Rihanna was saying/ Think I hate how the sausage is made" or "Prince would be mad at us/ Prince would be mad at us/ Lynch would be rippin' up our guts/ Like a zombie in the country."
Bloodwork comes with this artist's statement on Bandcamp:
Records are blood tests
Blood changes fast these days
Blood breaks, blood builds
Blood legos, blood hot wheels
Blood falls asleep, blood wakes up
We are up and at 'em, up and atom, up and Adam
and my temperatures a rising
This blood feels hotter than ever
This blood needs to be tested its so bubbling over
We cant even afford to get this blood out of me
We want to keep these precious bodily fluids
I don't want to change a thing
I don't wanta close my eyes,
dont wanta fall asleep cause i miss you baby
And i dont wanta miss a thing
But a little change would do some good
And every little thing she does is magic
a wop bop a loo bop
Count these platelets and hit me one more time
And Basko shared the following stories on Instagram announcing the album:
They're back, and there for so are we. Stream Bloodwork below.
Bloodwork is out now on Historic New Jersey. Buy it here.
