Just last year, the Marquette, Michigan crunch-pop savants Liquid Mike, a pretty recent Stereogum Band To Watch, released their album Paul Bunyan's Slingshot. It fucking rocks. Thus far this year, we've already had a new LP from Charmer, the emo band that shares a couple of members with Liquid Mike. Now, Liquid Mike themselves are getting ready to release Hell Is An Airport, a new album of their own. All indications are that this one is going to fucking rock, too.
When Liquid Mike announced Hell Is An Airport, they dropped two singles, "Groucho Marx" and "Selling Swords." Today, they've got another new one called "AT&T," which is about working in a phone store and feeling all alone except for the bugs in your drywall. That sounds heavy, but the track is bright and catchy, and it's a bit of a departure for this band. Liquid Mike might be following the lead of their recent tourmate Dazy, combining their own lo-fi power-pop attack with '90s style breakbeat shuffles and DJ scratches.
In a press release, frontman Mike Maple says, "It was inspired by an ugly breakup between someone very close to me and someone I had a lot of contempt for at the time. I wanted to confront him, but I realized the way things were going, he was suffering enough -- just a lonely guy with no one to talk to but himself and the bugs in the wall... The song you hear is practically the demo that I initially laid down when I wrote it a week or so before submitting the album. I think that's why it's my favorite song on the album, just felt like a spur of the moment happy accident." Below, check out Bob Sweeney-directed "AT&T" video.
The self-released Hell Is An Airport is out 9/12.
