Posted: by The Editor
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick put an orchestral spin on slowcore on their 2020 debut Ways of Hearing. Taking cues from Carissa’s Wierd and The World Is…, the LP was a stately companion to the sorts of music that peers like Horse Jumper of Love and Sign Crushes Motorist have built careers on. Four long years later, the Philly six-piece is back. Their sophomore album is titled — deep breath — The Iliad and the Odyssey and the Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, and it drops on April 25th.
We’re stoked to premiere the LP’s first single, and the band’s first song in four years, titled “April 25.” The song stretches out over five minutes, unwinding as it does and layering in strings and harmonies and gunfire percussion — it’d fit well on Ways of Hearing, but it’d be the liveliest track on that album by a wide margin.
Vocalist/guitarist Ben Curttright shares:
This song is based thematically on Homer’s Odyssey, which is why the album is called what it is, and some other books I was reading at the time. It’s a song about spending my fiancée’s birthday with her, getting food and going to the park. I came up with the guitar line while trying to tab out “Pioneering New Emotions” by Joan of Arc, which it turned out is in a really weird tuning, so it doesn’t sound that much like this song, though I did figure out how to play it eventually. It’s the drums that give this song its feel, really. I remember Alyssa saying, the first time we practiced this song as a group, that they wanted to write a drum part that sounded ‘intentionally bad.’ I think it was something like that. They said they wanted a part that started out halting and stuttering but then grew in confidence and complexity as the song went on. Like someone learning how to play the drums, almost. That description really stuck with me. That’s what the song is to me. The fact that April 25, in addition to being the title of the lead single, ended up being the release date for the record — I promise, it was just a happy coincidence.
Check out “April 25” below.
The Iliad and the Odyssey and the Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is out April 25th on Count Your Lucky Stars.
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Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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