NYC DIY Band Navy Gangs Premiere ‘1 Alone’ and kick off 30-show tour of the States

“An unnerving slab of  ’90s-inspired garage-rock.” – The Fader

“Piercing extended vibrato guitar melody lines and sludgy bass-drums accompaniment create a feel comparable to Dinosaur Jr.’s early days. – NYC Deli Magazine

“A continuous broil of anxious defiance.” – Stereogum

“[Poach is] sprinkled with the band’s signature energetic riffs but also offers doom and gloom.” – AdHoc

“Through putting on their own shows, forging their own community and hustling in the Big Apple, [Navy Gangs have] been able to deliver some slick, slacker-pop tunes into the world.” – Life Without Andy

This Thursday, Brooklyn band, Navy Gangs unveil new single, ‘1Alone‘, the opening track on debut album ‘Poach’, which is set for release August 3 via Dinosaur City Records and Modern Sky USA.

Premiering right now on AdHoc, it’s the follow-up track to album debut ‘Housekeeping‘, which was premiered via Delicate Steve’s Facebook, accompanied by a comical video of a shoebox house.

1Alone opens with a crescendo of fuzzing guitars, while two vocals reflect “it’s all a mess / it’s fine it’s in my head”. Singer Mathew Tillwick says of the track, “1Alone was written by me on my laptop, sitting on the floor of my first New York apartment, number 1A on December 29th, 2015. Noah and any other friends I had at the time were all out of town for the holidays. I was cooped up in this cold apartment and didn’t really know anyone. I was suffering from this massive FOMO anxiety. This song is about that feeling, and embracing it.”

Vocalist Matthew Tillwick and guitarist Noah Kohll hailed from Omaha, Nebraska before landing in Brooklyn, New York, where they formed Navy Gangs with Wilson Keithline on bass, and Eric Carey on drums. This year, the four-piece are set to release their debut full-length, ‘Poach’, on August 3 via Dinosaur City Records and Modern Sky USA. Mixed and mastered by Delicate Steve, an early champion of the band, the album exists in the in-between spaces and places that make up your life.

For a band whose music takes shape via a permeable unease, Navy Gangs have also confronted it head on, putting themselves on the map by sheer force of will: booking shows with a completely DIY ethos, relying on friends of friends of friends to carve out their own space and community.  “A continuous broil of anxious defiance” (Stereogum), their new material runs like a patchwork quilt steeped in the simplicity and specificity of these recalled experiences that are both hazy and important.

“Don’t you wanna know / what it feels like inside / it’s just a diorama,” sings Tillwick whose vocals The Fader has said “ooze right into your soul.” As ‘Poach’ progresses, you begin to thread together pieces of a sketched out landscape. Sometimes the best way to cope with reality is to construct a world outside of it, make sure you have places to escape to, people to escape with. Making music with good friends, finding a comfortable circle within everyday chaos. Slowing things down, having a beer after a show, getting out of your head and out of town. A nervous energy balancing by the tightening of grooves.  Things unravel and come together. The familiarity of a guitar and fuzzed out refrains taking you back, then propelling you forward. The way the band plays together suggests an in-sync, unspoken language replete with insider jokes.

If there is one underlining quality that defines Navy Gangs, it is their unabashed unpretentiousness.  A band built on dark basements and DIY spaces, mixed with sun struck open air and motel pools, an offering of four friends’ collective identity as they see it, no brash introduction required. The reality and unreality of living in 2018.  Recognizing that worrying if the grocery store is still open and if you are a good person are concerns that can coexist simultaneously, then going outside anyway.

On the new record, Navy Gangs deal with these contradictions and make peace. Happiness, Kohll says, is the most overrated virtue, and with the fourteen tracks on the band’s new record, you begin to understand that their perspective is perhaps just making the best of it.  “Someday you’ll die / and that’s alright” Tillwick sings midway through the album on “Carrot Tops”, and the practically joyous, definitely infectious instrumentals that swirl around the vocals suggest against all odds the band has managed to capture, as well as embrace, a  beauty within all this darkness.

When it comes down to it, Navy Gang’s brand of indie rock reads as classic pop music, evoking that comfort and occasional exhilaration that comes with discovering someone else feels how you feel, the late night shows and parties where it’s not time to go home yet, the next morning waking up, keeping the shades closed, adjusting to the blinding light.

In 2018 alone, the band has played slots at Austin’s SXSW  and toured the east coast of America with Father/Daughter’s Anna McLellan. June sees the band tour album, ‘Poach’, across the States.