MBR-052: New Wives “Hi I’m Alive”
HI IM ALIVE is the debut full-length album from Athens, Georgia based doom & gloom pop trio NEW WIVES, comprised of Drew Kirby & Matt Anderegg (who both pull double-duty together in the band Mothers) & Zach Gastley.
Conceived and written throughout 2014 and completed after returning from the group’s first full East Coast tour in the late-summer of 2014, HI IM ALIVE is an amorphous suite of minimalist pop & blistering noise that simultaneously dials back the heart-on-sleeve sentimentality of previous efforts (the twin WHITE and BLACK EP’s) while doubling down on the more clamoring, wide-eyed brashness and fun.
The result is a 31-minute swan song to the group as a live rock entity. Newer material has dabbled further in lo-fi minimalism (the field recording of “Do What You Like”) and, as recent live appearances have shown, a desire to blend more synthetic & eclectic elements - drum machines, samples, organs & the like - into the groups sound as a renewed, limitless studio-based recording project.
The closest springboard to that new NEW WIVES here is the closer, “Lisa (reprise)”, a 5-minute ballad(?) that begins as a simple Rhodes piano (played by Matt) duet with Kirby’s vocals, but slowly builds into a bombastic release, reworking & blending a host of melodic passages from throughout HI IM ALIVE into one final victory lap to close out the record. [[Mastered by Jason NeSmith (Casper & The Cookies, of Montreal, Supercluster) at Chase Park Transduction in the summer of 2016. Recorded way back in the spring of 2015 with Jesse Mangum at The Glow in Athens, Georgia.]]
CASSETTES COMING AS SOON AS I GET BACK INTO THE COUNTRY USA. FOR NOW, LISTEN TO “LISA” & FUTURE SINGLE “DON’T WAIT” OR CHECK OUT MATT’S MOST RECENT EP UNDER THE ALIAS GROUP STRETCHING ENTITLED “WAVE GOODBYE TO YOUR VISITORS”. ALL OF THIS IS AVAILABLE FOR FREE YALL!!!!!! >> https://marchingbanana.bandcamp.com/album/052-hi-im-alive
