For those unaware, in July, Texas-based art rock outfit Buttercup are back with their latest record, Grand Marais. The record follows their 2017 album, Battle of Flowers, and delivers a “painfully raw” set of tracks that are only now seeing the light of day after the band recorded them in 2014. The band wrote the record in the wake of the loss of the fathers of band members Erik Sanden and Joe Reyes.

On Grand Marais Buttercup shifts their jangly left-field aesthetic to a minimalist instrumental approach, using acoustic guitar and bass as the sole instrumental presence. The results are personal and honest but also show off the band’s talents as arrangers and vocalists, crafting strident beauty from disparate composite parts. Though the record pares back the band’s sound, they nonetheless remain capable of explosive heights delivered with raucous fervor.

They’ve already teased the album with their singles, “Opening Band” and “Morrissey for Company,” and today the band are back with a third and final single, “Let It Drop,” premiering with Under the Radar.

The band’s latest single is shorter than the previous two, but no less emphatic. It finds the band playing on the classic “tear in your beer” song. Yet, instead of offering a keening confessional, the band practice crying with the unbridled enthusiasm of a sport fan. The track builds from steady basslines and sparse acoustic strums into a sing-along climax, complete with gang vocals and anthemic harmonies.

These harmonies hit a fevered pitch in the track’s final moments as the band cheers on the tear’s downward descent into the bottle with passionate cries of joyous abandon. Ultimately, the band works the unusual song structure in their favor, packing loads of cathartic release into a brief minute and a half.

Grand Marais is out everywhere on July 14th, 2023 via Bedlamb Records.

1. Cry Sailor Cry
2. Opening Band
3. Forsaken
4. Let It Drop
5. Morrissey For Company
6. It’s A Laugh
7. Enter Sanden
8. Catastrophe Beauty Mark
9. I Love You
10. I Can’t

This wholly impassioned, and expertly crafted new recording opens on the casually soulful Cry Sailor Cry and the foot tapping, train track-hued rhythms within Opening Band, and they are followed by the heartfelt Forsaken, before a short song is brought forth that explores the theme of catharsis that runs through much popular music, Let It Drop.

Next up is the languishing Morrissey For Company (a song that offers a ridiculous conceit: a stricken soul seeking relief by obsessively and incessantly listening only to Morrissey for the duration of a whole year!) and the upbeat and jovially-slanted It’s A Laugh, and they are in turn followed by the bass reverberation that leads us into the gently frenetic Enter Sanden, the album rounding out on the quietly dutiful Catastrophe Beauty Mark, the languishing hipsway of I Love You, coming to a close on the rhythmical I Can’t.

Buttercup - Let It Drop | Official Music Video

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