Purr’s debut album Like New is a transitional record, full of songs about shedding old patterns and old relationships to make space for what comes next. Out today and produced by Jonathan Rado (Father John Misty, Weyes Blood, Whitney), the sounds of Like New nod, at times, to a place in the past (like your favourite 70’s AM), but they don’t dwell there. Behind its golden sheen, however, lurk stories like the starry, piano-driven ‘Giant Night‘. Named after Anne Waldman’s 1970 book of poems, watch the song’s new black and white performance video below:
Founding band members Jack Staffen and Eliza Callahan say they sing about “the push and pull between recognising the natural end of a relationship while not wanting the patterns of your daily life to change,” in the song’s lyrics. “We were riffing and reflecting on a very simple sentiment: knowing someone so intimately that’s no longer around and not knowing what to do with your empty time that was once spent with that person.”
Like New was written in the band’s basement studio in downtown Manhattan, a repurposed storage space beneath a restaurant in the building where Callahan once lived as a young child—thanks to the goodwill of the very last kind landlord in New York City. After sending around two home recordings produced by Callahan’s classmate, Sam Glick (who has played bass in the band ever since), they were offered a spot opening for Foxygen at Terminal 5, marking their second ever live show. Several months later, Rado produced Like New at his studio in East Los Angeles.
The effects of Americana and Psychedelia on Like New give way to something at once contemporary and classic with Staffen and Callahan’s harmonies, which can eerily forge what sounds like one voice humming at the centre. The band performs as a five-piece with Sam Glick on bass, Max Freedberg on drums and Maurice Marion on keys.
Like New tracklist:
1. Hard To Realize
2. Giant Night
3. Gates of Cool
4. Avenue Bliss
5. Boy
6. Wind
7. Refuse
8. Miss Youniverse
9. Bad Advice
10. Take You Back
