On 5th June, Providence’s Deer Tick will release their ninth studio album, ‘Coin-O-Matic’, via ATO. Today, they tease the album with a new single, the intimate ‘Everything Born‘, which touches on the LP’s underlying theme of impermanence. The band’s guitarist/singer Ian O’Neil shares: “‘Everything Born’ was written quickly about the tenuousness of life and the precious time we have to spend with the people that come into our lives. It’s about family, friends, neighbors, strangers and how these thoughts burrow a little deeper the older we get. I was thinking about my son and the people of Providence, RI while writing it.”
LISTEN TO ‘EVERYTHING BORN’ HERE
Deer Tick recently went into Rhode Island’s Big Nice Studio and filmed the song live:
WATCH VIDEO HERE
Deer Tick announced ‘Coin-O-Matic’ with lead single, the ramshackle jangle-pop ‘Mary Singletary’, which saw support from Stereogum, Consequence, Brooklyn Vegan and more. The track was the #1 most added at AAA radio last week.
‘Coin-O-Matic’ casts a bright light on a little-known facet of the American mythos: the hidden histories of the band’s home state of Rhode Island, where the everyday dramas of working-class families long collided with the menace of the mafia underworld. As they tapped into their infinite fascination with that strange duality, singer/guitarist John McCauley, guitarist/singer Ian O’Neil, drummer/singer Dennis Ryan, and bassist Christopher Ryan assembled a batch of songs exploring desperation, grief, redemption, and resilience with both cinematic detail and lived-in emotionality. A sharp new turn from one of indie-rock’s most enduringly vital forces, Coin-O-Matic arrives as a complicated love letter to a way of life slowly slipping from the collective memory.
The follow-up to Emotional Contracts (hailed by Uncut as one of 2023’s best albums), Coin-O-Matic takes its title from a cigarette-vending-machine company that served as the headquarters of Raymond Patriarca—a legendary mobster who ran one of the most ruthless crime families in U.S. history. “If you grew up in Rhode Island years ago, you’d see all these mobsters on the news and then run into them at a restaurant on Federal Hill,” says McCauley, referring to Providence’s version of Little Italy. “They were criminals but also very colorful characters, and I wanted the album to partly reflect a certain nostalgia for that kind of seediness.”
Recorded at Deer Tick’s home studio, Coin-O-Matic marks their first self-produced album in their two-decade-plus lifespan and features guest musicians like Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin (on baritone saxophone) and former Deer Tick member Rob Crowell (on organ). The album frequently brings a live-wire immediacy to their finespun storytelling. “We’ve never been so comfortable making a record, and I think you can feel that in the performances,” says Dennis, who engineered the LP. “We weren’t beholden to anyone else’s idea of what Deer Tick sounds like, and because of that, this album feels like an unfettered capturing of who we are as a band.”
In its soulful contemplation of recklessness and consequence, longing and devotion, Coin-O-Matic ultimately joins the canon of rock albums whose geographically rooted storytelling reveals deeper truths about the human experience. “I think there’s something universal in stories of regret and loss and poor decisions, even if they’re told through the lens of all the odd characters in this little state of ours,” O’Neil points out. “One of the reasons I wanted us to make this album is that I think Rhode Island deserves to be a contender for a place that people sing about,” McCauley adds. “Sonically, there’s nothing country about it, but to me it almost feels like a country record set in an urban environment—there’s definitely some outlaws in there. I hope that people see themselves in it, and that they understand a little more about the place that we come from.”
‘COIN-O-MATIC’ TRACKLISTING
1. Dog Years
2. Mary Singletary
3. Endless Loop
4. Sweetest Thing
5. ACI
6. Everything Born
7. Eyelid
8. I Am an Island
9. 507 Smith
10. Exit Door
11. Candy Cigarettes
WATCH ‘MARY SINGLETARY’ VIDEO HERE
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PRE-ORDER ‘COIN-O-MATIC’ HERE
