Retail Drugs Announces New Album, rECKless dRIVing (out August 1 via Angel Tapes/Fire Talk), & Unveils New Single, "manny"
Retail Drugs — the project of NYC musician Jake Brooks — announce their new album, rECKless dRIVing, out August 1st via Fire Talk Records imprint Angel Tapes, and present its lead single, “manny.” If you ask Brooks, rECKless dRIVing assembles b-sides and demos from the cutting room floor of i love you so !, Retail Drugs’ recently reissued 2024 debut LP. If you listen, rECKless dRIVing reveals itself as a fully-formed collection, teasing out buried themes and establishing Brooks as a tape-recording tour-de-force.
Emerging from New York City’s thriving scene of twenty-something rockers, Retail Drugs funnels Brooks’ early adulthood experiences through layers of fuzz, distortion, and guitars that land somewhere between grunge and noise. rECKless dRIVing picks up where Brooks left off, gesturing toward digital and electronic impulses yet to be explored in Retail Drugs’ burgeoning discography, and zeroing in on the emotional well from which i love you so ! pulled. rECKless dRIVing and its predecessor bring a decidedly lo-fi POV, and present some of Retail Drugs’ most immediate and heartfelt songs-to-date.
Lead single “manny” is an explosive track that grows out of little more than acoustic strumming. Propelled by Brooks’ emotive vocals and masterful overdubs, “manny” is one of the many thrilling cuts across rECKless dRIVing. Of the track, Brooks adds: "I don’t smoke weed much. Manny began as a shared spliff between me and longtime collaborator Dylan Sky. Ali and I were over at Dylan’s in Eagle Rock working on what would become the first demos of Laveda’s upcoming record, 'Love, Darla.' Ali went to sleep while Dylan and I continued working on stuff. Eventually we smoked a spliff to stay awake longer and 'manny' was the first thing we did after that. I think the spliff wrote the song mostly. I was doing a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do on a track. I bounced a bunch of stuff from that session to tape after Ali and I moved to NYC. This song was almost a last minute add to ilys but it just couldn’t fit the track list."
Listen to Retail Drugs’ “manny”
Brooks met his Retail Drugs collaborators — Ali Genevich (guitar), Aaron Scannell (bass), and Josiah Martuscello (drums) — over a decade ago, first connecting in a Saratoga Springs high school. “It’s like opening up an old book,” Brooks says of the group’s continued collaborations. The core behind Retail Drugs cut their teeth in Albany’s DIY community, and it’s here that Genevich and Brooks formed their similarly gnarled guitar-pop project Laveda. Touring with Laveda and driving across the country with his loved ones inspired much of Brooks’ initial work on i love you so !, and in 2023 he decamped to New York City. Throwing himself into the city’s storied community of rock enthusiasts as soon as possible, Brooks has spent the last 2 years writing, recording, and playing every DIY show that came his way. rECKless dRIVing presents what Brooks calls “the daily life of me,” and the 11 tracks across the project span from blown-out grunge scorchers, tender lo-fi ballads, to instrumental guitar numbers. “Sometimes goofing off, sometimes sad,” he makes of the collection, continuing, “all in all, it reflects my hatred of genre, and the joy of music.”
Tape recording is at the core of Retail Drugs’ art. Brooks’ affinity for home-tape-recording was inspired by his Laveda bandmates’ self-engineering, and his current deck was originally owned by its drummer Joe Taurone. The recorder transferred hands when Genevich purchased it as a gift for Brooks, finding him when he needed it most. During writing sessions for Laveda’s sophomore LP, Brooks’ mother passed away, “and then — bam — I couldn’t write the same way.” He continues, “It took me a while to figure out how to write songs again, because I always write based on my emotions and what I’m going through [...] but it was such a big life change it took me a while to figure out what I was even going through.” The deck allowed Brooks to tap back into experimentation, eschewing digital demo-ing and instead laying ideas down to tape. “I felt a certain spirituality from ditching the computer. It felt like the tape was another person that I was collaborating with, at least when I first started writing again.” Much of this experimentation led to i love you so !, which Brooks looks back on as “a grief record.” Where themes of loss and pain are buried beneath layers of distortion there, on rECKless dRIVing Brooks sits with the emotions that accompany grieving.
It would be easy to write-off rECKless dRIVing as a phoned-in collection of demos, but even a casual glance at the project’s tracklisting will see only one overlapping track from its predecessor. The remaining 10 songs mark new and original compositions, together presenting its own fully-formed statement. To dismiss any of these songs would be to dismiss the artistic process, one in which the first idea is often the best, and one in which creation is a tool in dealing with the hardships of life and loss. With rECKless dRIVing, Retail Drugs explores these initial concepts, teases them out to fruition, and presents a transitory statement that carries enough depth to stand fully on its own.
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