New York’s BEEN STELLAR have released their highly anticipated debut album Scream From New York, NY via their new label home Dirty Hit. A remarkably brutal debut – bruised and volatile – it captures an image of ‘20s New York that’s unrelenting and harsh, where tenderness is a finite resource burned up by the machinery of the city and human connection is a luxury product. Leaving behind the driving shoegaze of their early recordings, the five piece tap into the disaffected sound and spirit of New York luminaries such as Sonic Youth and Interpol, and the nihilistic, yearning cool of Iceage and Bends-era Radiohead, striking upon a sound that’s fearsome, buffeting and beautiful.
As its wry title implies, Scream From New York, NY is a record about what happens when language fails – between friends, partners, a city and its citizens – and the primal scream you might let out when words just don’t work anymore.
On the album’s title track, vocalist Sam Slocum says:
“The song’s roots date back three or four years, and it feels like we’ve grown up adjacent to that opening bass line – like it’s always been there with us. When you have a song for so long it can take someone on the outside to reframe it and that’s exactly what Dan [Carey – Wet Leg, black midi, Squid] did for us. The lyrics were originally based on a poem that Sky [Skyler Knapp – guitarist] wrote during the very early days of the pandemic in New York. We put the final touches on the lyrics right before I recorded the vocals; Sky and I pacing around outside the studio finishing each line together. In many ways this song serves as the album’s noisy yet calming centrepiece.”
Prior to the album release, Been Stellar shared a handful of standout singles from the album – the white-knuckled and cutting Sweet, the ferocious late-album highlight All In One, the masterful and dynamic Pumpkin and the head-turning lead single Passing Judgment.
Purchase the album on vinyl, CD and cassette HERE
SCREAM FROM NEW YORK, NY TRACK LIST
Start Again
Passing Judgement
Pumpkin
Scream From New York, NY
Sweet
Can’t Look Away
Simmer
Takedown
All In One
I Have The Answer
Been Stellar spent the spring of this year on a major European tour supporting The 1975 followed by their own sold out headline UK tour and a performance at The Great Escape. They will play three major UK festivals in July – Tramlines, Truck and Latitude – before returning to the US for their Lollapalooza debut ahead of their North American tour supporting Fontaines D.C. They then return to the UK and Europe for an extensive headline tour where they will perform their largest UK show to date at the Scala in London.
BEEN STELLAR UK & EU DATES
JULY
Fri 26 SHEFFIELD Tramlines Festival
Sat 27 OXFORD Truck Festival
Sun 28 SUFFOLK Latitude Festival
NOVEMBER
Sun 03 AMSTERDAM, NL Bitterzoet
Mon 04 COLOGNE, DE Blue Shell
Wed 06 BERLIN, DE Cassiopeia
Thu 07 HAMBURG, DE Molotow Sky Bar
Sat 09 WARSAW, PL Klub Hybrydy
Sun 10 PRAGUE, CZ Café V Lese
Mon 11 MUNICH, DE Orange House
Wed 13 MILAN, IT Bellezza
Thu 14 ZURICH, CH Exil
Sat 16 BRUSSELS, BE Witloof Bar
Sun 17 PARIS, FR Point Ephemere
Tue 19 BRISTOL Fleece
Thu 21 MANCHESTER Academy 3
Fri 22 GLASGOW King Tuts
Sun 24 NEWCASTLE Cluny
Mon 25 LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Tue 26 NOTTINGHAM Bodega
Thu 28 LONDON Scala
Sat 30 DUBLIN Workman’s Club
DECEMBER
Sun 01 GALWAY Roisin Dubh
Mon 02 BELFAST Ulster Sports Club
Like many other dyed-in-the-wool New York bands, Been Stellar are transplants. Guitarist Skyler Knapp and vocalist Sam Slocum first met in their fresher’s year of high school a decade ago; members of the cross-country team, they bonded over a t-shirt Skyler was wearing and decided to start jamming together. In Michigan, they began performing under the Been Stellar name, but it wasn’t until the pair began studying at NYU and met Brazilian-born guitarist Nando Dale, bass player Nico Brunstein and drummer Laila Wayans that a sound started to form. Despite working in wildly disparate styles – Nando and Skyler shared a love of British bands like The Cribs; Nico was making electronic music and Laila rave – the group bonded over a shared sense of humour, forming a motley crew based more on emotional compatibility than any rigid ideas of a shared artistic sensibility.
Determined to break new sonic ground, they embarked on a relentless practice schedule, even renting scrappy studios on days off during tours with Fontaines DC and Shame. After befriending him at SXSW the band tapped up producer Dan Carey (Wet Leg, black midi, Squid) to help coalesce the disparate elements of their sound that had been percolating: forceful, driving physicality; pop classicism; gnarled beauty; and a rich emotional core.
The resulting 10-song album announces Been Stellar as gimlet-eyed chroniclers of contemporary youth, staring through noise and confusion into the dark heart of modern life. These songs embody the spirit of a city that makes and breaks its inhabitants on a daily basis – an irony befitting the album’s tone: their preternatural ability to capture the disconnection that haunts New York with photorealist detail might just be the thing that vaults them into its pantheon.
