Natalie Piserchio
Laser Background Share Beautiful “Bright Field” Video with GoldFlakePaint
Dark Nuclear Bogs Out April 28th via Mutual Crush / Endless Daze
New US Tour Dates Announced
Philadelphia’s Laser Background will release Dark Nuclear Bogs, their latest full length album on April 28th via Endless Daze / Mutual Crush Records. The solo project of Andy Molholt, Laser Background’s latest picks up where last year’s Correct left off, floating through cosmic realms of warped psych pop and kaleidoscopic indie experimentation. The record is full of sugary hooks, adventurous production (courtesy of Ava Luna’s Julian Fader and Carlos Hernandez), and bent pop splendor.
GoldFlakePaint are sharing the gorgeous video for album closer “Bright Field,” a song that reflects on struggle and ultimately death. Directed by Craig Scheihing (Hop Along, Spirit of the Beehive), “Bright Field” is a song that Molholt wrote back in 2012 about his father’s struggles with alcoholism & excess when Laser Background was first starting. Through a songwriting swap project, Craig Hendrix (Japanese Breakfast, Dove & the Wolf) covered the song, slowing it down and making it into more of “a Bowie thing”.
Last year, Hernandez, Fader, and Molholt decided to “cover” his cover, using the vocals from Hendrix’s cover track and pitch shifting them down a third. They built an entirely new song around it, a stark and warped reality with the end of the song representing death. Molholt ended up including a clip of his mom & dad from a home video of him as a baby. The song was tracked two months before his father passed away.
GoldFlakePaint offered their thoughts on the strange beauty of “Bright Field,” calling it, “Dense and unwavering,” before adding “it makes for an exquisite unravelling, even more so when coupled with the accompanying video … Colourful and captivating in equal measure, the new track is a brilliantly intriguing next-step”
Dark Nuclear Bogs is meant to be a psychedelic adventure LP. Speaking about the album, Molholt shared, “with Laser Background in general, I like to push/pull the listener back & forth across the line of comfort. I like to lull people into a sense of stability, shake them out of it, and then pull them back into it again.”
Laser Background will spend the Spring and Summer out on tour around the US including dates with Norwegian Arms, Jo Passed, and Breathers. All dates can be found below.
“Laser Background succeeds here by putting sweet and sour in a room together and forcing them to get along. Molholt’s boyish vocals and the sing-song melody go head-to-head with queasy, warbling guitar and drums, creating tension that steadily builds into a full-on panic attack.” – The Key
“Not only is it one of Molholt’s most fully realized pop songs, it simultaneously pushes his music and production towards more textured, out-there, and evocative territory.” – Adhoc
TOUR DATES:
04/25 – Annandale-on-Hudson, NY – Bard College (Root Cellar) ^
04/26 – Saratoga Springs, NY – House Party ^
04/27 – Boston, MA – The ER ^
04/28 – Ridgewood, NY – Trans-Pecos ^
04/29 – Philadelphia, PA – Baird Mansion Atrium ^ %
04/30 – Pittsburgh, PA – Brillobox ^
05/01 – Lakewood, OH – Mahall’s ^
05/02 – Detroit, MI – El Club ^
05/03 – Toronto, ON – The Smiling Buddha ^
05/04 – Montreal, QC – Le Ritz PDB ^
05/05 – Winooski, VT – Waking Windows Festival ^
05/06 – Bloomington, IL – Secret Farm show ^
05/07 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle ^
05/08 – Milwaukee – The Local Club Anything
05/09 – Rock Island, IL – Rozz-Tox
05/10 – St. Louis, MO – Foam
05/11 – Hot Springs, AR – Maxine’s
05/12 – Fayetteville, AR – Backspace
05/13 – Dallas, TX – Armoury D.E.
05/14 – Austin, TX – Hotel Vegas
05/15 – San Antonio, TX – Limelight
05/16 – Houston, TX – Walter’s Downtown
05/17 – New Orleans, LA – Siberia
05/18 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl %
05/19 – Knoxville, TN – Pilot Light
05/20 – Raleigh, NC – King’s
05/21 – Richmond, VA – Gallery5
05/24 – Arcata, CA – Richards’ Goat Tavern
05/25 – Portland, OR – The Know #
05/26 – Seattle, WA – Lo-Fi Performance Gallery #
05/27 – Vancouver, BC – Hidden City Records #
05/28 – Olympia, WA – TBA
05/31 – Sacramento, CA – Starlite Lounge ∆
06/01 – San Francisco, CA – TBA
06/02 – Oakland, CA – Eli’s Mile High Club
06/03 – Los Angeles, CA – TBA
07/07 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Glove ∆
07/08 – College Park, MD @ The Void ∆
07/09 – Philadelphia, PA @ Everybody Hits ∆
^ w/ Norwegian Arms
% w/ Breathers
# w/ Jo Passed
∆ w/ Pregnant
1. Mostly Water
2. Hymnals
3. Drink the Dirt
4. Francine
5. Soothsaying
6. Climb the Hill
7. Slubberdegullion
8. Tiny Jumpers
9. Half-life
10. Bright Field
BIO:
For the better part of the past decade, Andy Molholt has been creating music as Laser Background. With each release, Molholt has come closer and closer to a unified vision, a musical explanation of how he sees the world. With his new LP, he has come closer than ever before, and titled the result Dark Nuclear Bogs. Originally conceptualized while thinking up anagrams of Laser Background in order to play a secret show, Dark Nuclear Bogs is the classic ‘self-titled LP as mission statement’ flipped on its head, seen from the unique, kaleidoscopic perspective that Laser Background is known for.
Dark Nuclear Bogs was recorded in a friend’s house on a man-made reservoir north of Atlanta with Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader of Ava Luna. The houses’ décor, unchanged since the previous tenant left in the 1970s, provided a perfect environment for the trio to cut the songs live to tape, and the relative seclusion of the lake allowed them to record whenever inspiration struck. As a result, different songs feel attached to different times of day. The opening track “Mostly Water” (written during a period of self-induced sleep deprivation) sounds like an unwelcome, hung-over morning where wanderlust overtakes common sense, and the raucous “Slubberdeguillion” (which takes its name from an Olde English word meaning ‘worthless person’) acts as the sloppy, self-destructive all-nighter that precedes it. In this song, Molholt pitches his vocals up two octaves and wonders out loud. “Why even bother to take a shower if you’re going to get dirty?”
Formed after the demise of Molholt’s band The Armchairs, Laser Background began as an attempt to put the stranger, more psychedelic aspects of childhood into music, and as an exploration of what effects childhood has on the rest of human life. 2012’s Laser Background EP and 2013’s Super Future Montage delved into these ideas, and even as the childlike aspects of the band drifted away on 2016’s Correct, the big questions remained. Questions we ask ourselves when we are young, and never quite find the answers to. Questions like “How does one deal with trauma?” and “How does one know when to let someone go?” Dark Nuclear Bogs feels like the logical conclusion to the ideas on which Laser Background has based its foundation.
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