Official press release:
New York City’s Dead Heavens, the psych-rock project of guitarist and frontman Walter Schreifels (Vanishing Life, Gorilla Biscuits, Rival Schools, Quicksand, and more), Paul Kostabi (Youth Gone Mad, White Zombie, Psychotica), Drew Thomas (Youth of Today, Bold, Into Another), and Nathan Aguilar (Cults), have released their song “Adderall Highway”. The song appears on their forthcoming album Whatever Witch You Are, out July 7th on Dine Alone Records.
Schreifels explains:
“‘Adderall Highway’ was born somewhere between Düsseldorf and Salzburg at the speed of 115-120mph. We were on our first European tour and taking advantage of Germany’s hyper-efficient autobahn system to make up some lost time between shows. As we watched the idyllic German countryside whirr by our windows the Riff to ‘Adderall Highway’ stirred in our very souls.”
Listen to “Adderall Highway” below, and pre-order the album here.
Whatever Witch You Are, their first full-length, plays effortlessly as a new-classic blues rock album — a new-millennium Fresh Cream or Let it Bleed — only with sharp-angular sounds, noticeably psyche inflections, and melodies that seem wrought out of rebar: strong, pared down, and purposeful at every point. If anything, their musical origins have permitted Dead Heavens to approach blues and psyche rock unnostalgically, arriving at an audibly honest sound, stripped of any of the tassels or affectation. The drums hit heavy. The guitars hit heavy. Yet hovering above them both is always Schreifels’ sandier vocals, urging us on through life’s endless freakishness and frustrations.
Schreifels continues:
“Many of these songs are love songs. ‘Basic Cable’ is about love but a modern love that’s lost its way— when couples are stuck at home, binge-watching or glued to their phones, absently doing the dishes, unsatisfied until they finally realize that what they really need is to just go outside. This song is for when they finally get out there.”
The pent-energy of this opening single explodes and never lets up, fueling quasi-Krautrock stretches in “Gold Tooth or “Bad Luck Child”, coasters like “Silver Sea” or “Experience To Liberate”, or the pounding rock of “Adderall Highway” and “Away From The Speed”. Following a burst of earlier singles like “History In My Hands” and “Feel Low”, this album is made for One Big Listen, and its lone rest stop, “The Moon Will Listen (But Not the Sun)”, begins reflectively but shifts into full rollick by its second half.
But as the title tells you, Whatever Witch You Are enjoins us to radically accept this darker magic, as Schreifels says:
“…in the sense of accepting a strong, strange, powerful woman who freaks out people precisely for all her powers, and not just in love, but acceptance in a modern world that can often isolate us, and make us feel like freaks. For the full 36 minutes of this record, we want people to be able to embrace this freakishness.”
Even when our world’s havoc-tossed, and our heavens dead, the lifers out there will always shrug it off and ready themselves for the strange new era.
Whatever Witch You Are track listing:
1. “Rainbow Of The Ohm Chart”
2. “Basic Cable”
3. “Away From The Speed”
4. “Bad Luck Child”
5. “The Moon Will Listen (But Not The Sun)”
6. “Adderall Highway”
7. “Gold Tooth”
8. “Silver Sea”
9. “Experience To Liberate”
