Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays GIFT — TJ Freda (vocals, guitar, production), Jessica Gurewitz (synths, vocals, guitar), Kallan Campbell (bass), Justin Hrabovsky (synths, guitar) and Gabe Camarano (drums) — will be releasing their third album, the TJ Freda and Teddy Mars co-produced Frenzy For The Thill on January 15, 2027 through Captured Tracks.
The JOVM mainstays began in earnest during the pandemic with the band’s Freda holed up in Brooklyn building the lush layers of what would become the band’s 2022 full-length debut, Momentary Presence. Both Momentary Presence and it’s follow-up, 2024’s Illuminator saw the band blending various strains of psychedelic music — krautrock, New Wave, electronic music and shoegaze — while cataloging Freda’s ongoing battles with panic attacks, frequently seeking to counter anxiety with transcendence. However, before the creation of GIFT’s third album, TJ Freda found that particular metaphorical drug wasn’t working.
The tours to support Illuminator had left Freda ragged and burned out. When a friend offered to let him stay at their Los Angeles home for two months, it seemed — at the time — to be a perfect way to decompress, to take time and write songs for other artists, and to put GIFT to the side for a bit. However, Freda arrived in Los Angeles as firefighters put out the final fires of early last year, to a house full of ash and not much else than the instruments he brought him. Moved by the renewal and resilience he saw in Angelenos coming together in the wake of the wildfires, the GIFT frontman suddenly felt a creative outpouring.
New GIFT songs arrived much more angst-ridden than in the past, yet not within their own sense of release. For the GIFT frontman, the songs were vehicles to ask the big, existential questions: Now, in his 30s, had watched friends settle down, but he found he was not doing searching. “Making Frenzy For The Thrill was partially about exploring the balance of living as an artist without disappearing into it,” Freda explains. From despondence, Freda emerged with a revitalized sense of creative purpose and direction.
Freda found himself gravitation towards grittier, angstier inspirations including 90s alt-rock, grunge and brasher iterations of electronic music. Combined with the band having become a tight, deeply connected unit honed by rigorous touring. Freda wanted to create something more visceral and collaborative. And as a result, Frenzy For The Thrill may arguably be the most-band orientated album of their catalog to date, anchored around the sound of five musicians diving into the madness together with an “one-for-all, all-for-one” sort of approach.
While adopting much of the ethos and structure of dance music, the album reportedly harnesses the energy the immediate energy the band cultivated onstage, while also incorporating more of their individual personalities and instincts in the overall arrangements and songwriting, Frenzy For The Thrill is anchored in far-seeing melodies and synth textures the band has become known for, while paired with what may be the most muscular performances to date.
Lessons are learned by the end of the album, including a soft of hard-won self-acceptance on the other side of the album’s violence, a healthier, more balanced life after staring into the void. “We’re always looking for resolutions, but life isn’t like that,” Freda concludes. “Frenzy For The Thrill is about still being in love with the chase knowing we might not find answers on the other side. This is the sound of us crashing headlong into the unknown.”
Frenzy For The Thrill’s first single “Hand To The Flame'” is a seamless blend of fuzzy grunge and shoegaze-inspired riffs, dance punk and post-punk-like four-on-the-floor and glistening synth arpeggios paired with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. Seemingly nodding at Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness-era Smashing Pumpkins, “Hand To The Flame” may arguably be the JOVM mainstay outfit’s most ambitious, most arena rock friendly songs they’ve written and released to date.
Taking some inspiration from the hubris parable of the story of Icarus, fire became a crucial organizing image for the GIFT frontman as he considered the border between ambition and ego, the pitfalls of obsession and the idea of cleansing one’s past by letting it all go up in smoke. “‘Hand To The Flame’ is holding onto passion, and what makes us human while the world falls apart. Desperately chasing passion in a passionless world,” Freda explains. “Like charging full speed towards something you know will eventually hurt you. Repeatedly putting your hand in the flame with the same outcome, knowing it will always be the same outcome but hoping it will be different. There’s romance in the chase, regardless of whether or not its going to hurt when you get to the end.”
Directed by Sydney VillacortaBuer, the accompanying video for “Hand To The Flame” is decidedly 90s inspired — and perhaps takes cues from Hole’s Celebrity Skin album art: The video is split between the band wandering around the smokey embers of a smoldering fire and dancing around an enormous bonfire, conjuring something ancient and primitive.
The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on a fall tour opening for Post Animal and Temples on select dates. The tour includes a December 2, 2026 stop at Warsaw. Check out the tour dates below.
GIFT Tour Dates:
Thu. Oct. 29 – Lansing, MI @ Grewal Hall *
Sat. Oct. 31 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle *
Sun. Nov. 1 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom *
Mon. Nov. 2 – Columbus, OH @ Skully’s *
Wed. Nov. 4 – Asbury Park, NJ @ House of Independents *
Thu. Nov. 5 – Richmond, VA @ Broadberry *
Fri. Nov. 6 – Asheville, NC @ Revival *
Sat. Nov. 7 – Chattanooga, TN @ Barrelhouse *
Tue. Nov. 10 – Houston, TX @ Secret Group *
Wed. Nov. 11 – Dallas, TX @ Puzzles *
Thu. Nov. 12 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Beer City Music Hall *
Sun. Nov. 15 – Milwaukee, WI @ Argo *
Fri. Nov. 27 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace ^
Sat. Nov. 28 – Montreal, QB @ Theatre Fairmount ^
Mon. Nov. 30 – Boston, MA @ Sinclair ^
Wed. Dec. 2 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw ^
Thu. Dec. 3 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts ^
Fri. Dec. 4 – Washington, DC @ Atlantis ^
Sat. Dec. 5 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle ^
Mon. Dec. 7 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West ^
Tue. Dec. 8 – Nashville, TN @ Cannery @ The Mil ^
Wed. Dec. 9 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-FI ^
Thu. Dec. 10 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon ^
Fri. Dec. 11 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club ^
Sat. Dec. 12 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall ^
* supporting Post Animal
^ supporting Temples
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