Dan Howard of Victoryland and Ben Guterl of Forth Wanderers have signed to Good English Records with their collaborative project Billboard Style, and announced its debut album, Pull of the Moon. It’s due out on October 16 via their new label home, and it’s the latest entry in a longtime creative partnership between Howard and Guterl, including multiple albums under the name Ben Special. “When you’re 22, you can decide, ‘I’m gonna figure out some way to pay somebody five to ten thousand dollars to make my record, or I can spend the next five to ten years figuring out how to do it.'” Howard says. “So we’ve kinda been doing that. It’s very DIY. Now we’ve spent a lot of time working in the studio together, in our own place, figuring out how to make records. So I feel at this point we’re pretty proud of the records that we make.”
“We share the load pretty equally now,” Guterl adds. “We’ve developed that trust as collaborators, where we can let each other breathe in the studio. I’m less protective of the songs I bring Dan, and if he has an idea I just sort of sit back and let him fuck around with it.”
The first single is an appealing indie rock track that shares the name of the project. “This song is about desire and wanting someone so bad it’s like a little parasite that nestles in your brain and rewires your thoughts,” Guterl says. “It’s about how you always lose a part of yourself in pursuit of someone else and how you might not care because love is intoxicating and maybe that’s the shit life is all about.”
BILLBOARD STYLE – PULL OF THE MOON TRACKLIST
Meloxicam
Billboard Style
Dropped
Jelly
I Am a Man
Sssss
Cell
Pumpkin
Ray
Superpowers
Waiting for the World