The self-produced record will be out on May 1st.
Kevin Pariso and Joel Witenberg will tell you they don’t take themselves too seriously. Hence the name of their band, Surf Rock Is Dead (that’s SRiD for short), and the title of their debut album, Existential Playboy. This playfulness informs their music, a hybrid of surf rock, shoegaze, goth, and new wave, through which the duo meditate on the paradoxes of modern life.
While SRiD’s first two EPs, 2015’s SRiD and 2017’s We Have No Friends? were a product of jam sessions, Surf Rock is Dead’s debut album is the result of a more deliberate writing structure.
Much of Existential Playboy, like the majority of SRiD’s music, is about interpersonal relationships, living in New York, and navigating through the world during uncertain times. Existential Playboy is also about confronting mortality. In the wake of a close friend’s death, as the band was in the midst of putting this record together, Witenberg and Pariso reflected even more deeply on the themes that characterize their music. The record’s title is a nod to life’s absurdities. “Why are we doing what we do? What even matters?”
Existential Playboy is a balanced mix of older, jammier tracks, and newer, poppier ones, like the moody and jangly kiss-off, “Diabolik,” or the album’s lead single, the anxiously romantic “Away Message,” on which Pariso sings about new and exciting romantic feelings.
Speaking about their new single "Diabolik", the band explained: "Diabolik is about dealing with some extreme situations we’ve encountered living with various people in NYC. Sometimes you never know what you’re going to get… Whether it be a roommate sleeping on the bathroom floor, a pile of who-knows-what on the living room floor or strangers ending up in YOUR room, sometimes it’s not exactly how you imagined your life. ‘Diabolik’ is a venting of those crazy roommate situations that suck in the moment, but given enough time, actually are pretty damn funny.”
Grab it here and stream it below.
(facebook.com/surfrockisdead)
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