Atlanta Dream Season – Party in the Hospital / Great

London’s Atlanta Dream Season—David Singleton (vocals, guitar), Donal Sweeney (vocals, guitar), Robin Lindop Fi$her (vocals, bass) and Jim Humphries (drums)—are a band indebted to several eras of indie rock. Built upon the solid foundations of Pavement’s 90s slacker rock, the band also invoke the energy of The Strokes and and the playful sincerity of more recent acts like Frankie Cosmos, Trust Fund and Withered Hand. The result is a sound at once buoyant and strange—a celebration despite, or perhaps because of, the bizarre banality of contemporary life.

As 2017’s debut full-length Crustacean Fields showed, this blend of influences leads to a varied sound, from upbeat garage rock jams to slower, more considered tunes. The latter was shown last week with the release of a new video for the track ‘Afterglow’, displaying the contained end of the Atlanta Dream Season spectrum.

The outfit are back with a brand new single, out via the London label Popside, which we are delighted to share today. ‘Party in the Hospital’ rushes headlong into the above description, the bouncy energy and singalong chorus whipping up a jubilant air, despite the less than festive medical imagery. “Ever thought about how disease, pain and death are inevitability intertwined with our existence?” Singleton asks. “Well, they are.” Atlanta Dream Season are here to remind us that we can rejoice in the moment of being alive, even when conditions around us seemed crafted specially to remind us of suffering and loss.

I don’t want no anaesthetic
to keep me on the ground.
Help me off of the table
and turn those knives around.

The nurses won’t remember
the charts they drew today.
We’ll clean that blood up later;
so roll the beds away.

White coats for you.
White coats for me.
We’re gonna have us
one fine jamboree.

In comparison, ‘Great’ is restrained and stripped back, injecting the warm earnestness of contemporary bedroom pop into Pavement’s languid style. As Sweeney describes, the song is “generally about not comparing your own life to everyone else’s and being happy with what you have,” playing as a gentle reassurance in the face of pressures and expectations. As such, the track blends wistfulness with a steady, steely resolve—insisting that although things can’t always be great, doing okay is still doing okay.

The single is out on the 12th December via Popside and you can get it from the Atlanta Dream Season Bandcamp page on Wednesday. If you are in London, there’s a launch gig on the same day at Servant Jazz Quarters in Dalston. You can find the full details here.

Artwork by Benjamin Shaw