2018’s Dan Deacon-produced album Riddles saw the Baltimore-based post-punk duo Ed Schrader’s Music Beat — Devlin Rice and Ed Schrader — turning heads both nationally and elsewhere.
The duo’s fourth album Nightclub Daydreaming is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Carpark Records. The album can be traced back to 2019 when Schrader and Rice began initially writing song with the idea of making a fun, danceable album. Along with touring drummer Kevin O’Meara, the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat road-tested the material while on tour with Dan Deacon in February 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt. Sadly, that Dan Deacon tour was one of the last experiences that Schrader and Rice had with O’Meara, who died in October 2020. O’Meara’s death weighed heavily on their minds as they finished working on the album. Understandably, it was an unshakeable moodiness and heartache. As Schrader puts it, “The cave followed us into the discotheque.”
They then went to record and mix Nightclub Daydreaming over a breakneck two-week period with Craig Bowen at Baltimore’s Tempo House. The end result wasn’t the album of “sunny disco bangers” that Rice says the band originally set out for, but something that turned out far deeper and darker. Their long-held reputation for whiplash-inducing stylistic shifts between aggressive and noisy rock and operatic, gloom pop have given way to a single aesthetic that seamlessly fuses those different impulses within propulsive, stark arrangements.
“The fun thing about this record is that it’s all at once informed by our more recent lush productions with Dan Deacon, yet spartan and boiled-down, exuding a coldness wrapped in ecstasy, following our time honored trend of never giving people what they expect, but hopefully what they want,” says Schrader.
The Charm City-based duo started the year on an explosive note: Last month, they released two singles off the album and announced dates for an an extensive Spring 2022 tour that the duo optimistically put on the books. The tour includes an April 23, 2022 stop Union Pool. (As always, those dates will appear below this review.)
As for the singles:
- “This Thirst” is a sleek post-punk ripper centered around angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, a rousingly anthemic synth-led chorus and Schrader’s cool yet urgent delivery. The song’s narrator finds his irresistible urges leading him through a surrealistic, chemical-fueled fever dream of desperate back-alley bartering and scheming, uncertainty and existential threats.
- “Berliner,” is a dark and brooding bit of post-punk centered around rumbling and distorted bass, scorching angular attack and unrelenting four-on-the-floor paired with Schrader’s coolly delivered baritone. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Berliner” evokes flop sweat and bleary-eyed late nights fueled by booze and drugs, lingering ghosts, and fever dreams.
“Echo Base,” Nightclub Daydreaming‘s third and latest single is propelled by breakneck drum fills, a relentless bass line and glistening guitar. Much like its immediate predecessor, the song is one part lingering ghosts, self-flagellation, bitter regret and simmering frustration centered around an icy facade.
“A few years ago, I saw Carrie Fisher speak, and she referenced a Paul Simon song from Graceland where he compares her eyes to cold coffee. Her voice cracked as she spoke, and the whole theater went silent,” Ed Schrader recalls. “This lyric from a decades-old song about a decades-old relationship still hurt her. This moment showed the brilliant, sharp-shooting woman of my childhood dreams as a real, vulnerable, wildly misunderstood and underappreciated human being. I wanted to make a song befitting a princess, our Carrie.”
Directed by Devon Voelkel, the new video for “Echo Base” is a haunting and uneasy fever dream that’s split between a robe wearing Rice microwaving cut up limes and dancing on his bed — until he gets sucked into a portal, where he unites with his bandmate in a cobweb covered, dank cavern, where they perform in front of no one in particular.
Tour Dates
3/9/22 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel
3/10/22 – Raleigh, NC @ Ruby’s
3/11/22 Atlanta, GA @ Earl’s
3/12/22 Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
3/14/22 – Dallas, TX @ Deep Ellum
3/15/22 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
3/16/22 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
3/17/22 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
3/18/22 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
3/19/22 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
3/22/22 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
3/23/22 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
3/25/22 – Boise ID @ Treefort Fest
3/29/22 – Portland, OR @ Holocene
4/1/22 – Seattle, WA @ Freakout Fest The Crocodile
4/3/22 San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel
4/4/22 – Sacramento, CA @ Starlet Room
4/6/22 – Costa Mesa, CA @ The Wayfarer supporting Sean Nicholas Savage
4/7/22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
4/8 – San Diego, CA @ Whistle Stop’s Bar
4/9/22 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
4/10/22 – El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace
4/13/22 – OKC @ Opolis
4/14/22 – St. Louis @ The Sinkhole
4/15 – Madison, WI @ Der Rathskeller (University of Wisconsin)
4/16/22 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
4/18/22 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
4/20/22 – Columbus, OH @ Spacebar
4/21/22 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Cafe
4/22/22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Dave Kiss Presents / Kung Fu Necktie
4/23/22 – Brooklyn, NY @ AdHoc / Union Pool
4/30/22 – Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar (RECORD RELEASE PARTY)
Tickets and more information is available here: https://www.edschradersmusicbeat.com/tour
