The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid To Die have announced the forthcoming release of their third full-length, Always Foreign. Due out September 29 on Epitaph. Always Foreign follows the Connecticut-bred collective’s acclaimed 2015 album Harmlessness.
Dillon and Her Son, is the kinetic and shimmering lead single from Always Foreign. One of the album’s most blatantly upbeat tracks, Dillon and Her Son speaks out against “getting older and becoming the kind of person who resents younger people for having fun and doing something new,” according to TWIABP bassist/vocalist Joshua Cyr.
Produced by TWIABP guitarist/synth player Christopher Teti, Always Foreign confronts everything from the opioid epidemic to xenophobia to emotional abuse in relationships. Throughout the album, TWIABP match their sprawling arrangements and layered lyricism with a raw emotionality.
“When we started writing we were fresh off Trump being elected, so there’s an anger to the album that’s different from what we’ve done in the past,” says TWIABP vocalist David F Bello. “There’s a lot more resistance thinking throughout the songs—not in a way that’s strictly anti-Trump, but also addressing things like white supremacy and controlling elements of the state.”
Along with Bello, Cyr, and Teti, the TWIABP lineup includes Tyler Bussey (guitar, banjo, synth, vocals), Dylan Balliett (guitar, vocals), Katie Dvorak (synth, vocals), and Steven K Buttery (percussion, vocals). Formed in Connecticut in 2009, TWIABP made their full-length debut with Whenever, If Ever (a 2013 release hailed as “revolutionary” by Pitchfork) and later delivered Harmlessness (praised as “bold and complex and dazzling” by Noisey and “grandiose and dramatic” by NPR).
PRE-ORDER ALWAYS FOREIGN HERE
The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die premiere their video, Marine Tigers below.
The song Marine Tigers is based off content from singer David Bello’s father José Bello’s new book Marine Tigers that he wrote about his experience coming to New York from Puerto Rico in the ‘40s. Bello explains, “Marine Tiger was the ship that carried people from Puerto Rico, and so the white people in New York started calling all the Puerto Rican people ‘Marine Tigers.’ The idea of being named after something that you’re not excited about ties into that feeling of always being foreign.” The song also references his mother’s personal history as a second-generation American of Lebanese descent—as well as his own upbringing in a predominantly white West Virginia town.
ALWAYS FOREIGN TRACK LISTING:
01. I'll Make Everything
02. The Future
03. Hilltopper
04. Faker
05. Gram
06. Dillion And Her Son
07. Blank # 12
08. For Robin
09. Marine Tigers
10. Fuzz Minor
11. Infinite Steve