“After Silver Leaves” By Smut

Smut includes vocalist Tay Roebuck, guitarist Andrew Min, bassist/synthesist Bell Cenower, guitarist/synthesist Sam Ruschman, and drummer Aidan O’Connor. The Chicago recently band announced their new album, How the Light Felt will drop on November 11, via Bayonet Records. Ahead of the album’ arrival, the group have share the lead single/video, “After Silver Leaves,”

Following the death of her sister in 2017, Roebuck turned to writing to navigate her labyrinth of grief. “This album is very much about the death of my little sister, who committed suicide a few weeks before her high school graduation in 2017,” she explains. “It was a moment in which my life was destroyed permanently, and it’s something you cannot prepare for.” Roebuck’s bandmates continued composing instrumentation, excavating underutilized 90s guitar tones and drum beats to build an expansive sonic world for her words to live. “A couple weeks after the funeral we played a show and I couldn’t keep it together,” says Roebuck, “but we just kept playing and started writing because it was truly all I felt I had, it was all I could do to feel any sense of purpose. For the past five years now I’ve been chipping my way through grief and loss and I think the album itself is just the story of a person working through living with a new weight on top of it all.”

The band symbiotically tweaked and tinkered, co-producing this magnetic collection of emotive pop songs. Mastered by Heba Kadry, How the Light Felt perfects a balance of nostalgic guitar tones, heartfelt vocals, inviting sonic production, and rigorous honesty that transforms pain into bittersweet catharsis. An electric current of hope led by Min’s jangling guitars and Ruschman’s soaring synth lines runs throughout the record, with Cenower’s fluid, harmonic bass lines connecting each dynamic track.

Lead single “After Silver Leaves” is an irresistible earworm, boasting Roebuck’s centerpiece of a chorus: “You call me by her name // but I was here first // and I was your girl.” The accompanying video, directed by O’Connor, loosely takes inspiration from iconic 80s music videos. “This song is about a former relationship I was in, it was really horribly abusive. But the approach to this one was to just spell it all out and see how silly it feels once shit really hits the fan,” Roebuck says. “The song sounds so happy, but I’m talking about driving someone to a hospital when they’ve overdosed. And having to detach myself and realize that maybe it’s not my job as a teenage girl to save some sad sack of a guy. I think a lot of young women will relate to that, unfortunately.”

Smut
How the Light Felt
Tracklist
Bayonet Records

1. Soft Engine
2. After Silver Leaves
3. Let Me Hate
4. Believe You Me
5. Supersolar
6. Janeway
7. How the Light Felt
8. Person of Interest
9. Morningstar
10. Unbroken Thought

Smut Tour Dates:

Fri. Nov. 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Ortliebs
Sat. Nov. 12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Alphaville
Mon. Nov. 14 – Washington, DC @ Pie Shop
Tue. Nov. 15 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Cafe
Wed. Nov. 16 – Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR Pub
Thu. Nov. 17 – Nashville, TN @ Third Man Records
Fri. Nov. 18 – Louisville, KY @ Whirling Tiger
Fri. Dec. 9 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village

Pre-order How The Light Felt By Smut HERE

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