Brooklyn band Small Black announced their third studio album Best Blues and shared its lead single “Boys Life.” It’s a great upbeat yet intimate-sounding indie pop song to close out summer and we hope to hear more like it. Best Blues was written and recorded in the band’s Brooklyn studio, 222, and mixed by Nicholas Vernhes (The War on Drugs, Deerhunter) of Rare Book Room Studio.
The album is about loss, not just of people, but of memories as well. The cover art is actually a salvaged photograph that singer Josh Kolenik found in his family’s flooded Long Island post-Hurricane Sandy.
I spent months trying to scan all these images and letters, most covered with ocean dirt, and in doing so discovered what people often find in their family’s past: that they are a hell of a lot like those who’d come before.
Tracklist
1. Personal Best
2. No One Wants It To Happen To You
3. Boys Life
4. The Closer I Look
5. Big Ideas, Pt. 2
6. Back At Belle’s
7. Between Leos
8. Checkpoints
9. Smoke Around The Bend
10. XX Century
Best Blues is out October 16th via Jagjaguwar. Listen to “Boys Life” below and see them on tour this fall.
Sun. Oct. 11 – Richmond, VA @ Strange Matter *
Tue. Oct. 13 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl *
Wed. Oct. 14 – New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa *
Fri. Oct. 16 – Austin, TX @ Red 7 *
Sat. Oct. 17 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada *
Tue. Oct. 20 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar *
Wed. Oct. 21 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
Fri. Oct. 23 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy Theatre
Sat. Oct. 24 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Mon. Oct. 26 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge *
Tue. Oct. 27 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret *
Wed. Oct. 28 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile – Back Bar *
Thu. Oct. 29 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux *
Fri. Oct. 30 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge *
Sat. Oct. 31 – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge *
Mon. Nov. 2 – Kansas City, MO @ The Tank Room *
Tue. Nov. 3 – Iowa City, IA @ The Mill *
Wed. Nov. 4 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry *
Fri. Nov. 6 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall *
Sat. Nov. 7 – Detroit, MI @ UFO Factory *
Sun. Nov. 8 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison *
Tue. Nov. 10 – Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa *
Wed. Nov. 11 – Burlington, TV @ Signal Kitchen *
Thu. Nov. 12 – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall *
Sat. Nov. 21 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right *
* w/ Painted Palms