Teenage Bottlerocket

TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET - SICK SESH!Ray Carlisle - vocals/guitar // Kody Templeman - vocals/guitarMiguel Chen - bass/vocals // Darren Chewka - drums/vocalsTheyve toured the world countless times. They kept the leather jacket-and-Converse look alive through an increasingly neon landscape. Theyve written songs about KISS, Top Gun and Minecraft. Hell, theyve even been on CNN a few times! Please welcome back to the spotlight Wyomings own Teenage Bottlerocket, whose ninth album, the 12-track Sick Sesh! traffic- cone-orange cover art and all will be released 08/27/2021 on Fat Wreck Chords This record is 12 songs because 14 was too long, cracks vocalist/guitarist Ray Carlisle. We wanna keep the energy up.Recorded in November 2020 at the Blasting Room (the bands eighth straight full-length with producer Andrew Berlin), Sick Sesh! is a little bit rougher around the edges than the last few TBR albums, from the haunting Statistic to the panic-inducing Strung Out On Stress to the buzzsaw lead of Semi Truck. According to Carlisle, that was on purpose.We spent a lot of time on guitar tones this time around that was important for us, he says. We made sure to bring the noisy, loud, irritate your fuckin mom guitar back. Theres a ton of intentional guitar noise and feedback. We dug up the amps we used for Freak Out! and They Came From The Shadows. This is punk rock, after all. Stay Rad! Is a great record, but its very radio friendly. I wanted to do the opposite of that: Lets get fuckin noisy.While the bulk of Sick Sesh! was written in January 2020 (with Statistic actually co-written between Carlisle and his son Milo), the COVID pandemic allowed for the band to take a little extra time for fine tuning, and the resulting tracks are some of the most stylistically diverse on the record. First up, theres the Templeman-penned Strung Out On Stress, the fastest, angriest track on Sick Sesh!, all about losing your mind during the pandemic. On the flipside, theres the mid-tempo, melodic track The Squirrel, written by bassist Miguel Chen and sung by Templeman, thats literally about a cute little rodent.He had too much time on his hands during the pandemic, Carlisle jokes. How did itbecome a Teenage Bottlerocket song? Im not sure. But it has the best guitar lead weve ever written!Chen also wrote the infectious sing-along Ghost Story as well as the album-closing Moving On, which marks the first time Carlisle has ever sung Chens lyrics on a Teenage Bottlerocket album. The song, about the bassists decision to move from his hometown of Laramie, Wyoming, to Texas to be with his ailing father, demonstrates a new side of Teenage Bottlerocket thats reflective, wistful and dare we say a little mature. (It felt good to sing that one, says Carlisle.)