July Talk stormed in with the radio-ready rock on their debut, followed by the volatile siren songs of Touch, and an album of sawtoothed pop + convulsing tension. For album three, the band cracks their equilibrium open to find a thrilling new balance in asymmetry. With “Pray For It”, JulyTalk commits to the possibility of alternate endings, acknowledging the power of vulnerability as a way to begin again. Out July 10th, 2020 (via Sleepless Records in Canada and BMG worldwide) the long-awaited new studio album emerges into unprecedented circumstances, a strange and startling background for July Talk’s surrender to the sacred unknown.
Black + white and vividly complex, Pray For It is about breaking patterns of action and reaction. Conflict, a major theme throughout, drives the story behind the steel-toed shoegaze swoon of “Pay For It,” . “I wrote this song after a group of men violently attacked my friends and bandmates in a fast-food restaurant one late summer night. Their rage erupted quickly and violently, like an old habit,” shares July Talk’s Leah Fay. “This song gave me a chance to re-imagine the experience with a sense of agency, to tell it like it is, like it always has been. If we question our ingrained habits which recycle states of violence, greed, destruction and hate, we can disrupt these toxic patterns and heal.”
“Pay For It” arrives via award-winning creator Norah Sadava’s video, a swooping emotional survey of consequences and responsibility. Originally inspired by a Roy Scranton quote about living ethically, the video is unavoidably reframed by current events: “Five weeks ago we wrapped a music video shoot. The lyrics, the images, the concept…it contextually lived in that moment and meant something personal and specific.
Four weeks ago we were editing the video. The lyrics, the images put in sequence… the context had slightly shifted. The meaning of a face mask had changed. The connotation of two hands touching had changed. Two weeks ago crowds of people, a hospital….all carried new meaning. The news around the world is changing so rapidly that it’s hard to know what these images will mean today, tomorrow, next week,” Sadava reflects.
July Talk’s path has never been through fitting in. Their music, viscerally, blisteringly hot, sliced right through the alternative and rock charts for multiple number one singles. Their churning and fiercely physical performances make spaces hiss and hum, spit and seethe in glorious, artful abandon.
With Pray For It, July Talk continues to rise with purpose and poise. From the start, the band has fostered a community of creators and collaborators on stage, on film and among those also challenging systemic inequities. July Talk has also grown in their roles as advocates of an urgent and fundamental music industry recalibration, through curatorial partnerships with festivals and by defining their own parameters for safer spaces at rock shows.
Pray For It was produced by Burke Reid and Ben Fox (Film Composer).
New album “Pray For It” available July 10th, 2020
The Fat Angel Sings 