MSPAINT have announced that they’ll follow their excellent 2023 debut album Post-American with a new EP, No Separation, on May 23 via Convulse Records (pre-order). The EP was recorded and co-produced by Show Me The Body’s Julian Cashwan Pratt and Harlan Steed along with MSPAINT’s own Nick Panella, and here’s what Panella says about it:
Most of our music is genuinely inspired by our relationships to each other. We bring together disparate musical philosophies and try to marry them and create our own community that can accept those differences and actually thrive as a result of them. Originality ultimately isn’t about creating something new as much as it’s about navigating your own inner world and the inner world’s of those directly around you until you’ve learned something that hasn’t been learned before.
The first single is closing track “Angel,” a song that’s almost pretty sounding compared to this band’s usual shouty synthpunk, and it includes an out-of-character auto-tune/vocoder section, but it’s still distinctly MSPAINT and it’s an awesome first taste.
“It’s definitely different from the way I would usually write for the band,” says vocalist Deedee. “It’s something you can sing along to, but it’s also something that maybe you’re saying to yourself that feels good–some positive thinking. I felt like we succeeded at bringing poppier elements into our space and making them our own instead of trying to bring what we do into a pop space.”
Indeed they did. Listen and watch the Alex Thiel-directed video below.
Update: MSPAINT also announced a tour with support from Lip Critic, Draag, and Pat & the Pissers, varying by date. That includes a Brooklyn show on July 19 at Market Hotel. All dates are listed below.
UPDATE: Fiddlehead/Have Heart vocalist Pat Flynn, who calls MSPAINT “my favorite act going right now,” has a new band called How Much Art and they were added to the Brooklyn and Boston shows.
Tracklist
1. Drift
2. Wildfire
3. Surveillance
4. No Separation
5. Angel
