Drop Nineteens are finally back, the legendary American indie shoegaze band returned, for the first time in 3 decades, with new single “Scapa Flow,” and the Announcement of a new record entitled Hard Light, which will arrive on November 3rd via on Wharf Cat Records (Gong Gong Gong, Bambera). Today, the band are sharing a second preview of the new LP, a track called “A Hitch” that arrives with a lyric video.

“’A Hitch,’ was the first song the band wrote when they got back together,” Drop Nineteens leader Greg Ackell explains. “It set the tone for the rest of the album, for what a new Drop Ninteens song could sound like.”

For 30 years the American shoegaze pioneers Drop Nineteens were silent. The band released their watershed album Delaware in 1992, and National Coma the following year before disbanding, but despite their turn away from the spotlight their legacy grew. Delaware came to be considered a classic of the genre, landing on lists of the greatest shoegaze albums of all time, with Pitchfork saying that “Delaware set Drop Nineteens squarely in a league of their own” on their run down of the genre’s best albums.

When Drop Nineteens disbanded in the mid 90s, Greg Ackell decided he would never make music again. He wouldn’t noodle around on a guitar in the basement. He wouldn’t get a group of friends together just to jam. He was done with music entirely. Following the release of the shoegaze masterpiece Delaware in 1992, and the intricate experimentations on National Coma in 1993, the group disbanded. They had a great run. They shared stages with Radiohead, Hole, Blur, PJ Harvey and Smashing Pumpkins. They went from being teenaged kids in Boston to mid-twenty-somethings with videos on MTV, sessions on the BBC, world tours and numerous festivals under their belt. So when Drop Nineteens ceased to be, Ackell felt content. He had the rest of his life in front of him to figure out what he wanted to do. Music was a closed chapter.

That was until 2021, when a friend from the band’s early days got Greg on the phone to suggest making some music together, just to see how it felt. Instead of shutting it down like he had been doing over the years, he decided to entertain the prospect. For the first time in nearly 30 years, he picked up a guitar with intent. He immediately called up Steve Zimmeran, the band’s bassist and fellow guitarist, and the two got writing. It felt effortless for Ackell, like he never stopped writing music. “We were off to the races,” he says, “But also the question came up: What does a modern Drop Nineteens song sound like?” Enter Hard Light, the band’s third record. To quote Ackell, it’s the band’s proverbial follow up to Delaware, a modern Drop Nineteens record that is completely singular in its sound and vision.

Drop Nineteens
Hard Light
Wharf Cat Records
Tracklist

1. Hard Light
2. Scapa Flow
3. Gal
4. Tarantula
5. The Price Was High
6. Rose With Smoke
7. A Hitch
8. Lookout
9. Another One Another
10. Policeman Getting Lost
11. T

Pre-order Hard Light by Drop Nineteens HERE