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Dendrons Share New Single/Video “Double Ending” & Announce New Album “5-3-8 ” out August 26th via Innovative Leisure

May 27, 2022
credit Daniel Delgado

Dendrons

Share new single/video, “Double Ending”

Announce new album: 5-3-8 – out August 26, 2022
via Innovative Leisure

Pre-order

Announce June/July US headline tour 

Chicago-based five-piece, Dendrons are returning with their new single, “Double Ending” which comes inline with news of the band’s signing to the esteemed label, Innovative Leisure (BADBADNOTGOOD, Nick Waterhouse, Ben Marc) alongside announcing their second album, 5-3-8 which is to be released on August 26, 2022. The new single arrives as a scintillating mesh of post-punk, Krautrock and outsider-pop, turning the dial on the sound of their previous album which found them opening for the likes of A Place to Bury Strangers, Omni, FRIGS and The KVB before having their momentum halted by the pandemic. Alongside the news of the new album, the band is announcing a headline tour June/July – full run of dates below.

5-3-8 – titled as a reference to the lyrical refrain that appears at a few points of the album of “Fifths, thirds, octaves only” – was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas and Highland Recording Studio in Phoenix, Arizona; it was produced by Tony Brant and Sonny Di Perri (Protomartyr, DIIV, Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective, Emma Ruth Rundle, Dirty Projectors) before being mastered at Elysian Sound by Dave Cooley. “Double Ending” demonstrates the more muscular sound that the band is tapping into on this second outing, nodding to the sounds of Wire, Gang of Four and Swirlies. 

Speaking about the single, Dane Jarvie of the band explains: “The basis of the song deals with concepts of monotony, drudgery of modern life and daily tasks, with ambiguous existential pay-offs, and the flexibility of truth and meaning depending on context.”

The reverb-soaked tone and alluring attitude emitting immediately from the ambiance hooks your attention, unpredictable stop-starts and ferocious drum shuffles join that ambiance and shift the complexity. Enhanced by the raucous bass notes signaling the courageous depth of the landscape, the attention realigns to the charming vocal notes on offer throughout. This ensemble is a stirring creation at its best, with deep rock rhythms, and this brooding approach.

Dendrons hit the road before they even knew exactly where they were headed. On New Year’s Day 2018, Dane Jarvie and Zak Sprenger first convened in Chicago to start a new project, recording a demo at home by the seat of their pants, and almost immediately after, began to play shows. “I would just email as many people as possible,” says Jarvie. “I’m like, ‘Can we open this?’ It didn’t matter if it was in Dallas or New Orleans or Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was like, let’s go.”

With a band name chosen by flipping through books in the library (“Dendron” is Greek for “tree”) and a sound and lineup in healthy evolution as they bounced around North America, Dendrons were finding who they were in front of a live audience. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, they were developing a propulsive, acerbic rock style both reminiscent of midwestern peers like Deeper and Dehd and reaching beyond to develop an unmistakable aura all their own. They put out their debut, 2020’s Dendrons, and were packing their bags for a full European tour before it had to be abruptly canceled when borders closed and venues shut down around the world. Suddenly, a band that cut their teeth on the road had to get comfortable staying at home.

It was out of necessity,” says Jarvie, who started brainstorming ideas for a new album back at his family’s home in Phoenix, Arizona, just after the pandemic took hold. When he returned to Chicago a few months later, the full band of Jarvie (vocals/guitar/synth), Sprenger (synth/guitar), Matt Kase (bass/synth/vocals), John MacEachen (guitar/samples), Nick Togliatti (drums), and Stef Roti (drums) formed a bubble to get together and work out what would prove to be their highly ambitious and meticulously crafted second album, 5-3-8. “It was just like, well, we can’t tour, we can’t do anything,” Jarvie remembers. “So we might as well just stick together and really create something.”

Meeting three or four times a week, and ultimately rehearsing almost 40 song ideas, Dendrons began to methodically whittle down the batch to a set of songs that weaved through one another intricately, with lyrical and musical motifs dancing around a swirling rock arrangement. Taken on their own, tracks like “Vain Repeating” and “Octaves Only” tap into the manic energy and wit of bands like Wire and Stereolab—but in the context of the album’s full vision, they come together to paint an album informed by the post-truth spectacle, and a desire for optimism in the face of isolation.

The lyrics paint those emotions with subtlety, having been put together partially through a cut-up method, grabbing words and phrases from places such as CNN and CSPAN. “That was a real intention with this record was to try different techniques in terms of how words are coming together—stringing together sentences through collage,” Jarvie explains. On “New Outlook 1,” he sings in his direct, almost Stephen Malkmus-like style: “Soon we’ll be stooped over laughing / Watching ourselves high on a vision.”

You’re always gonna leave a record feeling like there is something more to be said,” Jarvie says. “I don’t believe in a magnum opus. Art is contextual and exists for the specific time and circumstance it was created in. Every record is a conversation with the last.”

Tour dates
Jun 23 – Jacksonville, FL @ The Walrus
Jun 24 – Tampa, FL @ Hooch & Hive
Jun 25 – Charleston, SC @ Cutty’s Elliotborough
Jun 26 – Greenville, SC @ The Radio Room 
Jun 27 – Atlanta, GA @ 529 
Jun 29 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor
Jun 30 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel 
Jul 01 – New York City, NY @ Berlin
Jul 02 – Philadelphia @ Century Bar
Jul 03 – New York City, NY @ Trans-Pecos 
Jul 05 – Baltimore, MD @ Downsquares 
Jul 06 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Black Forge
Jul 07 – Asheville, NC @ Fleetwood’s 
Jul 08 – Nashville, TN @ TBA

Dendrons
5-3-8
August 26, 2022
via Innovative Leisure

1. Wait In Line
2. Double Ending
3. Vain Repeating
4. People Scare Me
5. New Outlook
6. New Outlook II
7. High In The Circle K
8. Interlude (Adjusting To The Light)
9. Octaves Only
10. Tangle
11. True

http://dendronsmusic.com/

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