Last month, Mamalarky announced their sophomore full-length, Pocket Fantasy, which is due out September 30 via Fire Talk. The album is the follow up to the band's critically-acclaimed 2020 self-titled debut LP, which earned praise from outlets like NPR, Uproxx, Consequence, Paste, Nylon, Billboard, VICE, Bandcamp, BrooklynVegan and Pitchfork, who said that the album "stands out from their contemporaries’ laid-back melancholy with complex instrumental interplay that inspires lean-forward listening."
To mark the announce the band shared a single called "Mythical Bonds" that created an immediate stir, earning praise from the New York Times, landing on multiple best of the week lists, and even appearing on a new music playlist from Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.
Today, Mamalarky are back with a second single from their forthcoming LP, a track called "It Hurts".
WATCH: the video for Mamalarky's "It Hurts" - HERE
Where "Mythical Bonds" saw Mamalarky in an anarchic and exploratory mode, "It Hurts" shows that the band are equally adept at creating quieter moments, building a mesmerizing whirl of keyboards around a Livvy Bennett's plaintive vocal performance.
"Writing about this song in this context feels extremely meta because the song itself picks at what it's like as a musician to essentially be careerizing your own experiences and emotions," Mamalarky's Bennett explains. "It's pretty bizarre to put out shit that is so personal–like, when someone loves a sad song you wrote it's like...I'm sorry we've been down in the same way? Or, I'm glad you enjoy listening to something that was essentially an intervention that I needed to have, haha.
"'It Hurts' is also a bit about the one-sided narrative of songwriters writing about their lives and relationships, for that to exist out there forever and to be consumed by people who only know the song. I'm always left wondering about the other side of the story when I hear those epic heartbreak songs, we'll just never know.
"There's one line about being 'a poorly drawn caricature,' which is what it can feel like having any of your music deciphered by anyone. The goal is to draw a really moving, poignant portrait though and I feel closer to doing that with every song we put out."
Tour Dates
- 9.29 - Phoenix, AZ - Trunk Space
- 9.30 - San Diego - Public Square
- 10.1 - Santa Ana, CA - Constellation Room
- 10.2 - Los Angeles, CA - The Echo
- 10.4 - San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
- 10.6 - Sacramento, CA - The Starlet Room
- 10.7 - Reno, NV - Off Beat Music Festival
- 10.9 - Portland, OR - Polaris Hall
- 10.10 - Seattle, WA - Vera Project
- 10.13 - Fort Colins, CO - The Coast
- 10.14 - Denver, CO - Hi-Dive
- 11.1 - Asheville, NC - Static Age
- 11.2 - Nashville, TN - DRKMTTR
- 11.3. - Richmond, VA - Get Tight
- 11.4 - Washington, DC - Comet Ping Pong
- 11.5 - Philadelphia, PA - Silk City
- 11.6 - Brooklyn, NY - Baby’s All Right
- 11.7 - Boston, MA - O’Briens
- 11.8 - Montreal, QC - Brasserie Beaubien
- 11.9 - Toronto, ON - The Baby G
- 11.11 - Fort Wayne, IN - The Brass Rail
- 11.12 - Chicago, IL - Schuba’s
- 11.13 - St. Louis, MO - the Sinkhole
- 11.15 - Athens, GA - Flicker Bar
- 11.16 - Atlanta, GA - 529