Last month Seattle band New Age Healers released their new album The Spin Out. It's massive, rock perfection. It's heavy and dark and beautiful all at the same time. Just check the video for the title track below:
Back in January I decided to check in on New Age Healers and asked singer Owen Murphy if they had anything in the works. He sent me a link to listen to the new album and simply said "we're going heavy on the next release". I was in love instantly.
As I listened to the album I came to the song "Radiate" and it stopped me in my tracks. It's fitting that the first line of the song is "Let's take a trip" because I felt like that's exactly what I had been doing.
It's for all of these reasons that New Age Healers are our Locals Only Artist of the Month of May and why you're going to hear Radiate on The End all month long.
You can see New Age Healers on May 10th at their album release show at Easy Street Records or at Chop Suey on July 3rd.
Learn more about New Age Healers below:
April 20th, 2024 – The breathtaking new album “The Spin Out” from Seattle’s New Age Healers, featuring layer upon layer of reverb, distortion, and vocal harmonies assault the senses, driven by Owen Murphy’s commanding but often ethereal vocals. Alongside emphatic drumming, flowing basslines, and cascading synths, melodies duel with counter-melodies. The dreaminess of shoegaze, yes, but the weightiness of punk, too, Every listen reveals an element you missed the last go around.
March 13th marked the release of the first single, the kaleidoscopic title track “The Spin Out,” accompanied by a dizzying psychedelic video which uses processed photos to create the illusion of animation. March 28th saw the release of the second single “All Wrapped Up.” The full seven-track album follows on Record Store Day, April 20th, 2024, released on vinyl, cd, and digitally to all streaming platforms.
Since debuting in 2016, New Age Healers have become a staple of Seattle’s fertile underground, releasing five earlier albums in quick succession and sharing the stage with the likes of Deserta, Aerial, The Veldt, Arcwelder, and many others. Besides multi-instrumentalist and lead vocalist Owen Murphy, the band includes a bevy of seasoned scene veterans: Guitarist/keyboardist Jeremy Koepping (Voyager One and Grand Hallway,) drummer Adam LeVasseur (Feed,) bassist Allen Murray (Modern Athletics,) and keyboardist Farkhad Saidmuratov (Kotlovan.)
The shoegaze tag doesn’t offend the band, just limits its impressive scope. “I don’t (care) about genre,” notes Murphy. “To me, this thing is infused with punk and straight rock ‘n’ roll, and the atmospherics of shoegaze, and harmonies that draw from folk-rock as much as modern stuff like Deserta or Cocteau Twins.”
The otherworldly intro of opener “Dying Moon” quickly explodes into a fury of post-punk riffs and thrashing drums, overlaid with Murphy’s sensual and ethereal vocal. The chugging intensity of “Spark Up” and “Radiate” betray the group’s roots in punk, while the angular drone of “Chemical Control” suggests krautrock.
“Candidly, I like rock ‘n’ roll, I like dancing, and I LOVE weird guitar sounds that interweave with each other to create something sonically that didn’t exist before,” Murphy says. “This is the same thing that people have been doing since the Velvet Underground, on to Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and more. And I think there’s a natural progression from those bands to ours.”
The sonic stew that New Age Healers concoct tickles the ear, bends the mind, and challenges the listener. “In that regard, it’s a bit like jazz,” Murphy opines. “You’re just trying to push things forward, standing on the shoulders of giants.”