This Friday, April 17th, Teen Suicide will release their new album, "Nude descending staircase headless", on Run For Cover Records. Today they're sharing one more early preview with their buoyant new single "Suffering (Mike's Way)."
"Nude descending staircase headless" is Teen Suicide's first ever proper studio recording and marks the start of a new chapter for one of the most unique and impactful bands in modern indie rock. The album was recorded/produced by Mike Sapone (Taking Back Sunday, Oso Oso, Cymbals Eat Guitars) and its leap in fidelity alchemizes all of the personality, nuances, and raw edges that make Teen Suicide special. The result is an immediately gratifying release that’s faithful to the band's earlier music while also moving boldly forward.
Earlier singles "Idiot" and "Spiders" introduced this heavier, hifi, fuzzed-out version of Teen Suicide, but "Suffering (Mike's Way)" shows off another side of "Nude descending staircase headless". It's an upbeat slice of jangly indie punk with bubbling keyboards, huge hooks, and even a surprisingly optimistic lyrical outlook.
Sam discussed the new song, saying:
"‘Suffering (Mike’s Way)’ was one of the first songs we started writing for this new record. I started working on it in 2022, not long after we started performing live again. I wanted to write something with the same propulsive energy of The Feelies, The Thermals, Wire. Jonathan Richman. That was our jumping off point, and it just sort of evolved from there. The song earned its parenthetical because Mike (Sapone, our producer) was adamant we amend the vocal melody in the chorus by a single note, and though I fought him on it at first, we tried it both ways and he was undoubtedly correct.
Lyrically, it’s harder to pinpoint – despite the name, I consider it one of our more optimistic songs. It’s a sort of love song. It’s a song about the world. About living life. About getting clean from opiates. How much better it is to feel everything than nothing. It’s really just a song about movement – forward momentum. All the times you think you can’t go on and then you just do, somehow, and suddenly you’re looking back at it all. And even then, you’re still moving."
Over the years Teen Suicide has gone through many sonic evolutions, and the influence of Sam and Kitty Ray's entire musical constellation (including TS alter-ego American Pleasure Club, Starry Cat, The Pom-Poms, Kitty, Ricky Eat Acid, and many more) can be felt in all corners of underground and even mainstream contemporary music. But "Nude descending staircase headless" is new territory even for these exceptionally pioneering artists: it trades the band's usual lofi process for a widescreen studio sound combined with some of their most visceral songwriting to date. “On the older records everything was self-recorded, home-recorded, on a laptop or on tape, and always with really limited resources,” Sam says. “I think we became known for that but it was also very limiting to be seen as a lo-fi band.”
"Nude descending staircase headless" is aggressive, catchy, intimate, and its lyrics are just as ambitious as the music, as the Rays wrestle with nihilism, addiction, and what it even means to try and make lasting art as the world embraces the path of least resistance at every turn. It's a truly sweeping rock album that's sure to please longtime fans and offers the perfect jumping on point for new listeners of Teen Suicide's dense catalog.
