SWEET APPLE have today confirmed release details for their third studio album, Sing The Night In Sorrow, due on July 28 via Tee Pee Records.
The band - featuring J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr., Heavy Blanket), Tim Parnin (Cobra Verde, Chuck Mosley), John Petkovic (Cobra Verde, Death of Samantha, Guided By Voices) and Dave Sweetapple (Witch, Eerie, Dusty Skull) - have collaborated across several state lines to create the follow up to their critically acclaimed 2014 release, The Golden Age of Glitter.
Given the band’s broad geographical reach, it’s no surprise that rock four-piece have confirmed details of the guest musicians that have contributed to the upcoming album. Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age), Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices), Rachel Haden (Haden Triplets) and Doug Gillard (Guided by Voices, Nada Surf) all make an appearance. Meanwhile, Stephen McBean (Black Mountain, Pink Mountaintops) will join the band on second guitar for live shows.
The album, SWEET APPLE’s third, will be accompanied by number of videos. It is the follow up to its critically celebrated LPs, Golden Age of Glitter (2014) and Love & Desperation (2010). The former was lauded by Rolling Stone, Esquire, USA Today, NPR, Salon and Mojo, which called it a “Venn diagram of melodic power-pop” in a four-star review. Spin called called Sweet Apple "one stomp box in the power pop of their youth, one in the heavy indie thud they invented.”
The album explores themes such as longing and escape, darkness consumed by endless daylight, love amid lovelessness, faulty memory, alienation and distance. It’s set to a musical palette that is wide-ranging, mixing atmosphere with impact. Sing The Night In Sorrow rolls out insurgent guitars, glitter-stomp, and orchestrated pop.
“People often talk about ‘the writing process’ in some mystifying way, but with this band we all have similar attitudes and reflexive responses – to music and to social settings,” says Petkovic. “Our environments might be different, but we all developed sensibilities in isolation, apart from our surroundings and we all tend to be detached participants in the world. It plays a role in the process of making music, but it’s also a bond of kinship.”
The kinship extends beyond band members. Enter longtime friend, Mark Lanegan, who duets on World I’m Gonna Leave You– a surging stomp with an ominous guitar riff that imagines leaving death and its ghosts behind. It includes a haunting harmony-filled chorus that pairs Petkovic with Robert Pollard. The former bandmates in Guided by Voices also pair up in Everybody’s Leaving, a countrified lament about the gutted, dying cities of their native state of Ohio. (“City planners cast a net to trap the ghosts of those who left. They’re declaring war on the exodus.”)
A Girl and a Gun is a loveless lover’s quarrel played out as a duet that includes Rachel Haden. She Wants to Run and Summer’s Gone explores disappearing faces and the urge to run away and join them. Candles in the Sun is a psychedelic incantation that posits a world of endless light consuming darkness.
“Darkness is often associated with some foreboding event, ‘the end’ that comes with that ‘dark evil,’” says Petkovic. “And yet it is endless light – whether provided by our phones and gadgets, or the Internet and our governments’ ability to see our every move, or earth’s withering cover from the sun – that is the greatest horror.”
Sing the Night in Sorrow is a power-pop classic that walks a tightrope between darkness and light and always manage sounds timeless and contemporary. The art work to the 10-song disc features “it girl” Chelsea Debo, who recently starred in Lana Del Rey’s Love video which has more 45 million views on YouTube. The back cover features a hotel-room montage that sums up the album’s themes of angst.
With more details - and new music - due to be unveiled over the coming weeks, SWEET APPLE are gearing up to leave their mark on 2017. The band will tour in support of Sing The Night In Sorrow.
Sing The Night In Sorrow will be released via Tee Pee Records on July 28, 2017.