Sailor Boyfriend is a new wave duo from Jersey City featuring Andy Waldron (writes, makes, sings) and Alex Mercuri (shreds, thumps, hollers). With an album and two EPs under their belts, including what might just be the best title/artwork combination of all time, the band are back with Shapes & Colors, a brand new full-length record of danceable punk music.
Very much a product of our ludicrous times, Shapes & Colors sees, as the band put it, “autofictional, surreal protagonists making do against a technicolor backdrop.” The tone exists somewhere between sincerity and absurdity, a George Saunders-esque appreciation of not only the bizarre excesses of our society but also the people striving to live beneath them. With subject matter ranging from brand paranoia to escapist fantasies both forward-looking and back, this is a record by and for folks stranded amidst the roiling sea of late capitalism, clinging to anything and everything in an effort to stay afloat.
“In my first year after graduating from college, commonly referred to as ‘the beginning of the rest of your life,’ I held onto books, songs, anything I could relate to as much as retreat to,” Waldron explains. “The aim of this album really is for others to use it the same way.” To further these themes and ideas, Sailor Boyfriend have also put together a full color, 4.25″ by 5.5″ zine, filled with illustrations based on each song from Kat Schneider, Laura Marciniak, and Waldron himself.
Today, we’re lucky enough to be able to share a new single, ‘The Battle of Sugarhill’. The perfect example of Sailor Boyfriend’s uncanny ability to create songs both sleek and playful, the track is a taut, neon-flashed display suspended within a dreamy dark. The hip mood and style belies the comic farce of the lyrics, Waldron detailing a war as seen through the eyes of “disco sucks” DJs
You know you gotta believe
Pray loud enough ‘till they screamMarching with our crimson platform shoes
Kneeling on our Velvet leather pewstook on Sugarhill
Dahl scoffed, “oh, this landfill?”
i asked if he’d been but he just grinned
and rung his decibelbearing flags of artistry
we were screamin’ like an infantry
They’re ready to shock? i’d die on this rock and
Take back our industry
Album art by Andy Waldron