Toronto’s Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs have shared a new video for the their single Judy. The video was shot by Shawn Kosmerly, and stars his mom, Judy Kosmerly, and features cameos from Shawn’s dad (on a ride on lawn mower!), and the Iron Lungs themselves, as Judy’s suburban life is reinvigorated by the power of rock n roll. Watch it via YouTube below.
Despite it’s over the top premise, the process of filming the Judy video stirred up some emotions for the clip’s director, as Kosmerly explained: “His mom is the best and rocked super hard, and I started bringin’ it harder. When we were filming in the venue [Shawn] came up to me and said, ‘dude, I don’t know if you saw me but I was sorta weeping a bit while filming that cus… cus that’s my f**kin mom, dude.’ It was beautiful.”
Judy appears on the band’s recently released self-titled LP which came out on Burger Records and Dine Alone on July 28th. In support of their newly released album the band are announcing a slew of fall North American dates, including shows with Yukon Blonde and The Sheepdogs. Full details are listed below.
Tour dates
08/29 Toronto, ON – CNE*
09/09 Toronto, ON – Indie 88’s 4th Birthday Party @ The Phoenix”
09/13 Ottawa, ON – Dominion
09/14 Montreal, QC – Pop Montreal @ Turbohaus
09/15 NYC, NY – Trans Pecos (Annex)
09/16 Philadelphia, PA – Pharmacy
10/06 Detroit, MI – Trixies
10/08 Winnipeg, MA – Handsome Daughter
10/09 Saskatoon, SK – Vangelis
10/10 Calgary, AB – The Palomino
10/12 Vancouver, BC – Rickshaw Theatre
10/13 Victoria, BC – The Copper Owl
10/14 Seattle, WA – Timbre Room
10/16 Portland, OR – Bunk Bar
10/18 San Francisco, CA – Brick and Mortar
10/22 Long Beach, CA – 4th St. Vine
10/26 Denver, CO – Lost Lake
10/28 Muncie, IN – Be Here Now
* w/ The Sheepdogs
^ w/ Yukon Blonde
” w/ Mother Mother
* w/ The Sheepdogs
^ w/ Yukon Blonde
Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs have been working on this LP for almost two years. Their previous album, ‘Gates of Hell,’ released on Oakland punk/garage label Southpaw Records (Ty Segall, Young Guv), received praise from outlets like Pitchfork, Spin and Noisey, and saw the band tour extensively, playing with Red Kross, Black Lips and Screaming Females, and becoming regulars in DIY scenes up and down the East Coast, but for their follow up the band sought to build upon the lo-fi aesthetic of their earlier releases and push themselves beyond their garage roots. They began working with producer Alex Bonenfant (METZ, Crystal Castles), who brought them into a proper studio for the first time, and they embraced their abiding love for, and near encyclopedic knowledge of 70’s power pop, in the process honing a potent brand of guitar music that draws influence from a broad swath of the genre’s history.
It’s a sound that at once revels in a rough and anarchic feel, best exemplified by Coffey’s untamed wail of a singing voice, while displaying a deft approach to songwriting and arrangement, collecting and repurposing ideas gathered from bands like Cheap Trick, Dwight Twilley, Teenage Fanclub, The Cars, Thin Lizzy, The Undertones, and The Exploding Hearts, in the service of songs about teenage isolation, petty criminality and escape, rooted in an unshakeable faith in honesty, love and the transformative powers of pop music. It’s an ambitious record, and one where obvious care has been taken to refine every element of the finished product, but it’s an ambition that even on the 9+ minute epic medley that makes up much of the record’s second side, never edges into pretension or obscures the band’s irrepressible enthusiasm. Despite their maturation this is still, as Pitchfork’s Evan Minsker said of their previous release, “the sound of dirtbags having fun and falling in love.”
‘Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs’ tracklist
01) Talk 2 Her
02) Tough
03) Voicemail
04) Judy
05) Pressure
06) I: Ragnarock
07) II: Teenage Release
08) III: PhD
09) You Don’t Have To Be Nice
Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs is out now on Burger Records and Dine Alone. Grab it here.
