Retail Drugs announces their new LP, rECKless dRIVing, will drop on August 1st via Fire Talk Records imprint Angel Tapes. If you ask Brooks, rECKless dRIVing assembles b-sides and demos from the cutting room floor of i love you so !, Retail Drugs’ recently reissued 2024 debut LP. Ahead of the album’s arrival Retail Drugs has shared new single “Manny.”

Brooks met his Retail Drugs collaborators — Ali Genevich (guitar), Aaron Scannell (bass), and Josiah Martuscello (drums) — over a decade ago, first connecting in a Saratoga Springs high school. “It’s like opening up an old book,” Brooks says of the group’s continued collaborations. The core behind Retail Drugs cut their teeth in Albany’s DIY community, and it’s here that Genevich and Brooks formed their similarly gnarled guitar-pop project Laveda. Touring with Laveda and driving across the country with his loved ones inspired much of Brooks’ initial work on i love you so !, and in 2023 he decamped to New York City. Throwing himself into the city’s storied community of rock enthusiasts as soon as possible, Brooks has spent the last 2 years writing, recording, and playing every DIY show that came his way. rECKless dRIVing presents what Brooks calls “the daily life of me,” and the 11 tracks across the project span from blown-out grunge scorchers, tender lo-fi ballads, to instrumental guitar numbers. “Sometimes goofing off, sometimes sad,” he makes of the collection, continuing, “all in all, it reflects my hatred of genre, and the joy of music.”

Tape recording is at the core of Retail Drugs’ art. Brooks’ affinity for home-tape-recording was inspired by his Laveda bandmates’ self-engineering, and his current deck was originally owned by its drummer Joe Taurone. The recorder transferred hands when Genevich purchased it as a gift for Brooks, finding him when he needed it most. During writing sessions for Laveda’s sophomore LP, Brooks’ mother passed away, “and then — bam — I couldn’t write the same way.” He continues, “It took me a while to figure out how to write songs again, because I always write based on my emotions and what I’m going through […] but it was such a big life change it took me a while to figure out what I was even going through.” The deck allowed Brooks to tap back into experimentation, eschewing digital demo-ing and instead laying ideas down to tape. “I felt a certain spirituality from ditching the computer. It felt like the tape was another person that I was collaborating with, at least when I first started writing again.” Much of this experimentation led to i love you so !, which Brooks looks back on as “a grief record.” Where themes of loss and pain are buried beneath layers of distortion there, on rECKless dRIVing Brooks sits with the emotions that accompany grieving.

Retail Drugs
rECKless dRIVing
Tracklist
Angel Tapes/Fire talk Records

1. little dog
2. waiting room
3. just the thing
4. still..
5. manny
6. rECK
7. person A
8. i wanna be cool
9. i just want to bring you down
10. he hears us
11. euphoria

Pre-order rECKless dRIVing HERE