The sunburned centerpiece of Cymbals Eat Guitars’ stunning upcoming album, Pretty Years, sees leader Joseph D’Agostino jolted out of his post-tour malaise by a surreal and terrifying Independence Day experience, over tumultuous fuzz-bass and incongruously swinging drums. “Swore I’d be present / And grateful for every second,” D’Agonstino declares at the end of it all, only to admit, “Later the feeling faded / I couldn’t help it.” Holiday weekends never do last as long as you want them to.
At their healthiest as a band, the New Jersey-via-Philly quartet have made one of the best classic-rock records of the 21st century. But will it give them the push that they need? the swinging, stunning centerpiece of Pretty Years, Cymbals’ magnificent fourth album, due out in September. The song, whose new video is premiered below, tells the story of Independence Day 2015 in the City of Brotherly Love, when Joe, Alex, and Sam piled in a friend’s car to go set off some fireworks, without realizing how wasted their driver was. “There were a bunch of cars already there and people were setting off sparklers and roman candles and stuff,” D’Agostino explains before the show, at a nearby Mexican restaurant with bassist Matthew Whipple. “And the person who was driving slammed it over these fireworks displays at very high speed. It was very scary.”
Cymbals Eat Guitars fourth album, Pretty Years, will be released on September 16th, 2016 on Sinderlyn Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 