The Extensions

Some records announce themselves. Others invite you in.

The opening lyric of Modern Vice, the fourth release from NJ indie dance outfit The Extensions, is a simple instruction: “Step in slowly.” Just about thirty minutes later, the album closes with a different sentiment: “Turn this night to day.” Between those two lines lies a record less concerned with arriving somewhere than with all the little transformations which happen along the way.

Due August 14th via Mint 400 Records, Modern Vice finds The Extensions embracing the most fully realized version of themselves to date. While songwriter Brian Erickson remains the creative center of gravity and drummer Pete Stern the heartbeat, this is unmistakably a group effort; one that discovers its identity through collaboration.

For the first time, all four vocalists take turns as lead singers. Bassist Will Blakey delivers the slick, sly, sneakily-literate “Discreet Bliss.” Guitarist Becca Cristino brings a sense of contradictory warmth to the divorce anthem “You and Me and Everybody We Know.” Then there’s “Over Now,” a song that has been in and out of Erickson’s setlists for two decades and a multitude of arrangements. All it took was someone else to finally have a go at it. In keyboardist Lisa LoVell’s capable hands, “Over Now” emerges as one of Modern Vice’s emotional high points.

And while Erickson handles lead on the album’s remaining five tracks, no song exists in isolation. Harmony voices weave in and out of the mix, creating the sense that this music belongs not to a single narrator but to an ensemble cast. It is this approach that gives Modern Vice its cinematic quality. Vocalists enter and exit like characters moving through interconnected scenes. Themes are introduced, revisited, and reframed as the spotlight shifts from one voice to another.

By the time we reach the final track, “Love at First Night,” all the characters who had circled one another for the whole album are finally in a room together. Erickson describes the song as “walking into the night when you’re twenty, the lights go up, and next thing you know, you’re forty,” a sentiment that captures Modern Vice’s larger preoccupation with time, memory, romance, and the subtle ways people change without realizing it.

And that idea might actually be the key to understanding Modern Vice. Much like an unforgettable night, you don’t simply leave changed. You come away with a new understanding of what brought you there in the first place. You step in slowly. Then you turn this night to day. Everything that happens in between? That’s where you’ll find Modern Vice.