American Motors, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania group, have shared “marlboro miles”, the second single from their album Functional Music, out 6th November via Expert Work (US), The Ghost Is Clear (US) and Vina Records (ITA). The track arrives with music video out now.
“Marlboro Miles” follows lead single “No Horses”, which was added to The Guardian’s Film & Music playlist, where it was called a “bleak, droll, Protomartyr-esque anthem”, and included in Stereogum’s five best songs of the week, who wrote that the band “know how to construct a nasty riff and to present it in ways that feel perfectly off.” “No Horses” has since landed on Spotify’s New Release Radar playlists and is picking up radio plays across Europe. A single without a chorus, “Marlboro Miles” is a slow lurch of murky, reverb-drenched hits and pauses that sits between the band’s 2024 debut Content and the new record.
The duo appeared in a number of end-of-year lists for Content and made their follow-up with their good friend and post-hardcore luminary J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines) at Magpie Cage. It’s a studio with pedigree; Shudder to Think, Girls Against Boys and Brainiac all recorded there, and the band leans into that history, treating the studio itself as an instrument rather than just a place to track a record.
Listen to “Marlboro Miles” HERE
Watch video for “Marlboro Miles” HERE
Pre-order Functional Music HERE
Guitarist Dustin White has spent years as an “indie lifer”, playing in or running front-of-house for Pink Mountaintops, Times New Viking, Sea Wolf, and Dead Meadow, and Functional Music is where that decades-deep music-lifer perspective finally sits up front and takes the wheel. Where Content built out a world in decay, the new album is about the people stuck living in it: waitresses, nomads, kids growing up too fast and dosed on catastrophe before they’re old enough to understand it.
Dustin White of the band said of “Marlboro Miles”: “A single without a chorus? Why not baby. In the times before thrift stores just threw out all photos and slides I found a photo of a woman laying in a bed surrounded by Marlboro Miles. It could’ve been Camel Cash, but I’m 100% sure it was some sort of cigarette related currency. Sadly that photo is lost to the abyss that is multiple cross country moves, time, and a general ‘fuck it’ attitude, but it lives in my mind. The first verse deals with a science fiction convention that takes place in Columbus, Ohio that we used to party at every year. It was magical. I saw a Star Wars Stormtrooper and a Klingon makeout there once. This song feels like the connective tissue between our first record and the new one. It seems like a good way to signal that not everything on the record has big pop moments and plenty of it still exists in the same murky reverb drenched hit then pause world that we love. This one is really fun to play live.”
The video was conceived as closer to an art installation than a music video. Amanda Lee McCarty, aka Clotheshorse, said: “The concept of Marlboro Miles (the real ones, not the song) is pretty dark at its core: buy more stuff from us (and in this case, that particular stuff is going to shorten your life) and in exchange…we’ll give you some different stuff that will advertise the stuff we sell. This isn’t necessarily a unique marketing idea. Yes, tobacco brands used to do this, but even today, brands, airlines, and grocery stores give you the chance to save up points and get free stuff. It makes us spend more money. But is the free stuff really that great? And is it really free?”
“We wanted to convey the idea of long desired/’earned’ stuff that is now just sitting in a landfill or a thrift store, but we didn’t want to be as literal as ‘here’s a Marlboro hat.’ Another thing we see in a major way in thrift stores is stuffed animals. Like aisles and bins of them. Stuffed animals and Marlboro merch have similar lifespans: wanted (and sometimes earned – in elementary school, I negotiated a Smurfette stuffed animal in exchange for a painful medical test)…then abruptly, stuffed in a donation bin or trash can.
American Motors will also be heading out on the road later this month, joining Jonah Matranga’s onelinedrawing – the long-running project of the former Far frontman, who will be touring his album Tin Cans With Strings to You in its entirety for its 30th anniversary – for a run of East Coast dates.
American Motors live:
22 October – Boston, MA @ Rockwell – Tickets *
23 October – Syracuse, NY @ Funky Town Comics & Vinyl – Tickets *
24 October – Long Island, NY @ Massapequa VFW Hall –Tickets with dearly departed *
25 October – Rutherford, NJ @ Williams Center – Tickets with soft no *
26 October – Baltimore, MD @ Metro – Tickets with Knub *
28 October – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie – Tickets with dear forgiven *
* = supporting onelinedrawingwing
Functional Music is out 6th November via Expert Work / TGIC / Vina, pre-save HERE
