We premiered Chris Walla’s lilting, much downloaded “Sing Again” a couple few weeks ago. Time for another peek at Field Manual: EW has a stream of “St. Modesto” (track 10 on the album, for those who care) that you can listen to over and over again if you so see fit. Press play here. While listening to the song’s lite rollick, consider the fact that Walla plays almost all the instruments on the record (except when New Pornographer’s Kurt Dahle and/or Death Cab’s Jason McGerr handle some of the drums) and that there’s a new Death Cab album due in May, which he played on (of course) and produced (remember seeing him behind the knobs on that video?). All to explain why he couldn’t be bothered to sit down for the below promo pic. Wait, did he just compare someone/place to a power chord … or a power cord? Oh, it’s a pun. Hardcore.

Field Manual is out 1/29 on Barsuk.

[photo by Autumn de Wilde]

As for the new DCFC album, it’ll be really weird…

Via Billboard:

Walla describes the album as “really weird. It’s really, really good, I think, but it’s totally a curve ball, and I think it’s gonna be a really polarizing record. But I’m really excited about it. It’s really got some teeth. The landscape of the thing is way, way more lunar than the urban meadow sort of thing that has been happening for the last couple of records.”

Walla adds that it’s “louder and more dissonant and … I think abrasive would be a good word to use.” A variety of influences factored into the album, he says, including Harmer’s taste for “heavy, sludgy, slow metal” and Walla’s rekindled interest in the synth-punk band Braniac.

Confirmed tracks on the May release include “Casino Blues”, the upbeat “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” the not-upbeat “The Ice Is Getting Thinner,” and a nine-minute song “I Will Possess Your Heart,” on which bassist Nick Harmer tells Billboard, “We hit our stride on that song. We looked at the habitual things we’ve done in the past and tried to move beyond them.”

So, raise your expectations everyone.