Chicago-based five-piece, Dendrons have shared Vain Repeating, the final advance preview of their forthcoming second album, ‘5-3-8’ which is out via LA-based label, Innovative Leisure (Alex Maas, BADBADNOTGOOD) on August 26. The band, which has just wrapped up a Mexican tour with A Place to Bury Strangers, has found tips for this new album from Stereogum, FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, Post Trash, CBC Radio, Under the Radar, KCRW and more.
Vain Repeating changes tact from the jungle-inflected world of New Outlook II finding the band tapping into a punkier sound, switching flows and dynamics in a similar fashion to Magazine, Wire, etc. Speaking about the track, Dane Jarvie of the band says: “The song was created as a word pastiche of inconsequential data, spit out in aura of self-importance. The song deals with a loose promise of either cathartic piety, or vanity, through repetition, depending on who you’re talking to.”
‘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.
Listen to Vain Repeating via all platforms here or via YouTube below.
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.”
‘5-3-8’ track list
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
Pre-order Dendrons’ ‘5-3-8’ here
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