Release: The Districts - Great American Painting

The Districts - Great American Painting

Release date: Friday, March 11th 2022

V2 Records

 The Districts today announced Great American Painting, their fifth full-length album produced by Joe Chiccarelli (Spoon, The Strokes, Broken Social Scene) and recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound in LA, will be released on February 4th, 2022, via Fat Possum. The band has also shared the soaring, spirited first single “I Want To Feel It All” alongside its cinematic video,which they directed together with Frank Apollonio. Great American Painting is now available for pre-order.

 

“‘I Want To Feel It All’ is about feeling everything possible all at once, and emotional fireworks and loving the universe and everyone in it. But it also saves room for being about death and the darkness underlying all existence, and forgiveness and pain and acceptance,” explains vocalist/guitarist Rob Grote. “The video takes place in the twilit Pennsylvania hills, where we perform with fireworks in the ever fleeting present this song seeks to grasp. The surreal undertone to the video represents the detached dreamlike world this song lives in, while the unspoiled American landscape is a symbol of idealism and the natural mystery that inspires our work.”

 

The Districts—who toured supporting Modest Mouse this summer—have announced additional tour dates beginning in March next year. The band will also head back out on the road next week for a headline tour of the eastern U.S. A current itinerary is below.

 

Great American Painting is the rare album that shines a bright light on all that’s wrong in the world but somehow still channels a galvanizing sense of hope. With equal parts nuanced observation and raw outpouring of feeling, the Philadelphia-based band confront a constellation of problems eroding the American ideal (gentrification, gun violence, the crushing weight of late capitalism), ornamenting every track with their explosive yet elegant breed of indie-rock/post-punk. Threading that commentary with intense self-reflection, Great American Painting ultimately fulfills a mission The Districts first embraced upon forming as teenagers in small-town Pennsylvania: an urge to create undeniably cathartic music that obliterates hopelessness and invites their audience along in dreaming up a far better future. 

 

Great American Painting was deeply informed by the two months that Grote spent living in a cabin in Washington state at the height of the pandemic. “While we were there I spent some time driving near all these crazy rivers and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and I was mesmerized by how those unspoiled landscapes really capture a timeless idea of what America is,” says Grote. “I’d just come from taking part in the protests in Philly and getting tear-gassed, and it felt so strange to go between those two extremes. In a way this album is asking, ‘What is the great American painting? Is it police brutality, or is it this beautiful landscape?’ And the truth is it’s all of that.”

 

Mostly made up of songs sketched by Grote during his time at the cabin, Great American Painting marks a significant departure from 2020’s acclaimed You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere. “The last album almost felt like a recording project of my own rather than a band affair, so from the start the goal was to focus on what’s always worked well with us: an element of simplicity that’s still very powerful, with a lot of visceral rock-and-roll energy to it,” says Grote. To that end, Great American Painting endlessly spotlights The Districts’ greatest assets—the sharply detailed and prismatic tones of guitarist Pat Cassidy, the complex yet combustible rhythms of drummer Braden Lawrence and former bassist Connor Jacobus, who has since amicably departed the band (Lawrence will switch to bass in the band’s live show)—while introducing a new subtlety into their sound. “We usually love to just keep making everything louder, but this time there was a lot more attention paid to carving out space within the songs to really showcase each instrument,” Grote points out.

 

In the making of Great American Painting, The Districts found their sense of connection exponentially intensified. “It just felt so nice to spend time with the people I care about, to have fun and try to make something good for the world,” Grote says. That feeling of kinship and solidarity is something the band hopes to extend with the album’s release. “The thing I value most in music is when an album expresses some sort of pain or frustration or hope that I also feel,” he explains. “I hope this album makes people feel like something within themselves is reflected in the wider world, and I hope that makes them feel less alone.” 

 

For more information contact:Stefan.Hayes@v2benelux.com