They Are Gutting a Body of Water just dropped a fresh track called “RL Stine” from their soon-to-be-released album Lotto.
The music video for this one is kind of wild—it’s a fast-moving mashup of hundreds of pictures showing city sidewalks, scratched-up tree trunks, random lost stuff, and a bunch of fuzzy shots of the band rocking out live in Philly. Richard Phillip Smith put it all together, and honestly, it feels like flipping through someone’s weird dream.
Doug Dulgarian, the band’s main guy, talked about what inspired the song: “There is a guy who I see every day near my house. I always buy him a pack of Newport hundreds, knowing full well that he will trade it for crack. I wonder sometimes if it’s the addict in me, enabling the addict in him, or if I just fully understand his struggle. Perhaps we’re the same after all.” His words definitely make you stop and think.
Before this, they already let fans hear “American Food,” “Trainers,” and “The Chase,” so “RL Stine” makes four songs out in the wild before the album actually comes out on October 17.
Fans sometimes wonder if musicians and listeners feel the same things.
Once Lotto is out, the group is packing up and heading out for a big tour all over North America. They’ll kick things off October 30 in Cleveland, and after zigzagging through a bunch of cities in the US and Canada, everything wraps up December 12 back in Philadelphia, which is basically their home turf.
If you’re curious about the whole shoegaze thing, there’s an essay by Philip Sherburne called “The Shoegaze Revival Hit Its Stride in 2023” that’s worth a read.
