hello! I haven’t updated my Tumblr in a million years. But wanted to post this because it’s such a big deal. here's a very sappy and over-involved announcement. Miscreant Records will be releasing Ra Ra Riot's new album NEED YOUR LIGHT on cassette.https://miscreantrecords.bandcamp.com/album/need-your-light
so, when i was 17, i had cancer and it sucked. It was hard and weird and beautiful and sad and fucking terrifying. I went through radiation therapy. I sat in my room with the door shut in isolation for several days. my parents had to put my meals on the floor in front of the door, then go upstairs before i came out to get them, because I was radioactive. I watched like way too many Wes Anderson movies. And listened to music. Lots of music. And I prepared for my upcoming first semester at Syracuse University.
I found out a band my friend had showed me earlier that summer had gone to Syracuse too. There was a video of them in a church that completely flipped me inside out, as I sat in my room, alone, eating iodine-free bread (it is gross). The vocals soared, strings swelled, bass ripped, guitar riffs unfurled. They sang about love, not explicitly, but universally. This band represented my future, not only just for the next four years, but like...completely beyond that. This is what I wanted to do with my weird life -- a life totally uprooted in so many scary and beautiful and important ways. I was really lucky. I was going to live and be stronger and learn so much. I was going to walk through feet upon feet of snow and figure out how records were made. I was going to grow the fuck up. Ra Ra Riot's first record represented so many things to me I couldn't put into words.
And now, I'm a little older. I work with some of the best, most passionate and hard-working music lovers I'll ever meet, that anyone could know. And I'm putting out their record on my label. A label they were such a big part of inspiring. A label that has given me purpose over many years of figuring out who I am and what I love to do.
And it's a smoldering, deep record. It's complex and dynamic and beautiful. It's just so beautiful. It has songs about being older and figuring life out and realizing how little you still understand about the world around you. Songs about embracing your life for what it is, what you've built with it, embracing the people around you who make your life special.
I'm a really lucky person. This shit doesn't happen to people. I'm eternally grateful to this band and to Josh Roth. This is a really special thing on my favorite medium. It’s rich and warm and welcoming. Anyways, thanks for reading this whole thing. You can get your copy in the store or at the merch table on the band's upcoming national tour with SUN CLUB, PWR BTTM, and And The Kids.
love, jeanette
