Photo Credit: Ryan Nolan
Following up on their 2015 debut LP ‘Magick Spells’ (Dine Alone) LA’s psyche rockers Gateway Drugs is back with their sophomore LP “PSA,” featuring ten tracks to shake us all out of our collective stupor. In an exclusive interview, the band tells Foxes Mag that “PSA” is much more intimate and raw than our first album. All of the songs were recorded live for the most part.” They continued on about what it was like to have Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes producing the LP, “It was an amazing element in itself to be able to work with someone we look up to musically. The song writing process was direct and quick, it took about 12 days to record the album in full. We were lucky to be able to record in Josh Hommes Pink Duck Studiowhich is like a little time capsule in the SFV”. The result is raw, wild and chaotic, much like the last few years of the band members’ lives. Liv, Noa and Gabe Niles, are the three siblings that make up the LA-based quartet, and are joined by longtime friend James Sanderson on bass/guitar, whom they met and formed an instant bond with back in 2010 while on a tour of the US. Today the LA quartet premiere their third single and lyric video “I’m Always Around”. The lyrics are written and sung by Liv who says, “The song reflects my nostalgia at the time towards my relationship that was failing, my sadness knowing he would hate me one day for choosing myself over him”.
“PSA” is a record that retains the band’s characteristic impassioned, noisy, reckless and melodic shoegazy, psychedelic sound, which Hellbound likened to “The Stooges meets My Bloody Valentine and the Brian Jonestown Massacre —a little dark, a little eerie and a little grainy and all intoxicating.” Listeners will also encounter musings that are a bit more personal than their debut. Take for instance, the album’s lead single “Wait (Medication)“ featuring lead vocals by Noa, the song is about “Falling in love with madness. When sustenance is stolen and your vice becomes your friend, your lover. Romanticization of loneliness and despair. The delight of debauchery and the consequences of excess,” according to the band.
Last week they released their second single “Slumber.” Featuring lead vocals by Gabe, the song is a reflection on unrequited love, with all the attendant rejection. The video however takes a different twist as the band invites viewers into a day in their life. “Videos nowadays tend to be overly cinematic or pretentious. The songs get lost and leaves little room for the listeners imagination. We wanted to keep it simple, sincere, and true to form, so we shot and edited the video ourselves”. Then there’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” an allusion to Gil Scott-Heron’s ground breaking 1971 track, which is perhaps the most overt expression of PSA’s overall theme. This fuzz-bass driven dirge is a take on how rebellion, protest, counter-culture and what they represent and mean have been manipulated, packaged, commodified and sold back to us in ads for jeans and car insurance.
“PSA” is an album that reflects “everything that is wrong in the here and now: the weaknesses of the world laid bare, and the almost total state of apathy we all find ourselves in due to feeling powerless to effect any change with respect to all this,” says the band. “PSA” is an attempt to connect with others who feel the same way and regain a sense of our ability to change things for the better.
PSA TRACKLIST:
- Invitation
02. Wait (Medication)
03. Bored
04. Slumber
05. Lillie
06. I’m Always Around
07. Backroom Lover
08. Interlude
09. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised [EXPLETIVES] 10. Psychotic Reaction
“After grabbing our attention a few weeks ago with the dense, psyche-wary “Wait (Medication)”, their follow up single “Slumber” is a bit space-ier than it’s predecesor, sounding a bit less Brian Jonestown Massacre in lieu of a shoegaze slant.” –FLOOD Mag
“Another month, another slew of great new releases including the revival of one of LA’s true rock ‘n’ roll groups” Gateway Drugs.” –Foxes Mag
“LA’s Gateway Drugs are heavy like Stone Temple Pilots, feverish like The Rolling Stones, and altogether fresh: Their songs sound familiar, like we’ve known them all our lives, but in fact “Wait (Medication)” is a brand new rush to the sense.” -Atwood
“Sinister new guitar-rock fuzz-heaver that sounds like 2020 in a drug-fueled nutshell”. -Vanyaland
“Theirs is a dense, chaotic beauty: pop songs laced with ennui, menace and scorn, guitars blazing.” -LA Buzzbands
“a narcotic surge and the lean and psychedelic brand-new single” -The Autumn Roses
“Wait (Medication)” rollicks with disinterest like an aloof bad boy, smoking cigarettes and paraphrasing past conversations. Guitar licks dance in swirling psychedelia until everyone starts to get wild ideas about their own mortality. That tipping point is what the band intended, representing, among other things, “falling in love with madness.” -Grimy Goods.
“Hazy and sinuous psych-rock that doesn’t shy away from a bit of busy-ness and a bunch of layering in its offering, “Wait” is a lie-on-your-back, stare-at-the-clouds kind of tune. Reverb-heavy vocals, phasing melodic guitar, and plenty of sitar-like fret slides harken to sun-soaked late-afternoon acid rock radio play.” -A Journal of Musical Things
“Sitting somewhere near the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Brian Jonestown, but also sounds that float close to (at points) Gomez and Primal Scream at their most grainy and raw, Wait is this shuffling, attractive, at times muscular slice of psych / shoegaze, and it’s one that demands repeated listens.”
-Backseat Mafia
“The guitar riffs in the song are spikey and unforgettable, and the dual vocals are soft and hazy.” -The Girls at the Rock show
“Slumber is anything but a sleeper, the bold guitar anthem is full of driving percussion and dreamy pop guitar rock. This is a climactic sort of sound, big guitar and mellow vocal, leaves a nice warm psychedelic pop taste.” -Indie Music Reviews
“US outfit bring the same psychedelic feeling as Primal Scream to their latest indie-rock jam” -Mystic Sons
“ the new single walks the lines of surrealism thanks to a refined tone of shoegaze. Gabe’s lead vocals are thick with a slacker charm and hold their own melodic bliss from verse to verse. Kickbacks of brightness come alive in the rhythm section, to only be set into a well deserved pool of confusion.” -Girl Underground Music
“Wait (Medication) sounds like the most accessible angle of The Brian Jonestown Massacre mingled with the space rock largeness of Spacemen 3 and the punch of the seventies version of the Stones, all that psychedelically colored and adapted to a darker and grittier direction.” -Destroy Exist
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