THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Attracting fans of psych, desert rock, shoegaze, goth, and neo-garage without aligning themselves directly with any these camps, SoCal’s Tombstones In Their Eyes have been creating a fuzzed-out, psychedelic swirl for the past few years. With their new album Looking For A Light, TITE are shifting their sound ever so slightly and elevating it a few notches. It is an album swathed in thick fuzz that allows its melodies to shine bright. “I think there is a greater variety of sound in the songs, less reliance on massive layers of fuzz guitar, clearer vocals, better lyrics,” explains guitarist/songwriter John Treanor.
Embracing the sounds of their earlier albums and EPs but pushing forward, TITE have constructed a lush album that wraps itself in feedback for warmth, not distance, which makes it more inviting and less impenetrable. “It’s less focused on darkness and depression, more hopeful maybe, than some of our earlier work, and even has a love song (Ship On The Sea),” he elaborates. “Some songs only have one or two guitar tracks (Wrong, Hey), which is not our norm. It’s hard to put it into words, but I see it as a step forward in my songwriting as well.”
From the chiming atmosphere of Ship On The Sea (“It was not meant to be a love song. It was meant to be about being alone … out alone on the sea with no other ships in sight. But as the lyrics shaped up, it turned into a love song”) to the abrasive melodies of I Can Hurt All The Time (“For a song about depression, this song rocks. This song makes me feel good, even though the subject is dark, because songs like this make me feel less alone, even though I wrote it. Haha”), Looking For A Light is rife with dark fuzzed-out sounds and mesmerizing and celestial melodies.
Quarantine Blues was written during the first two months of the current pandemic but instead of anchoring it to this specific era, Treanor opened it up a bit and made it more universal. “I assumed there would be hundreds of pandemic songs written and wanted this to be a bit more timeless,” he says. “So in my lyric editing, I intentionally left the lyrics a bit more vague as to when and what was being referenced. It could be about isolation, it could be about the pandemic, or it could be about the plague.”
With the quarantine blues seeming to lessen and the hope for a reopening of the touring industry on the horizon, TITE are hopeful that they’ll be able to present their new music to a wider audience. “I’m dying for these songs to get out into the world,” Treanor says excitedly. “It’s a big step forward for us musically, and I hope that it gets heard and appreciated by not only our existing fans, but new ones as well. Besides playing live and touring, which I’m looking forward to when things open up, I’m also excited because we have another record in the works already and the songs keep coming out, thankfully!”
Tombstones In Their Eyes are John Treanor (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Stephen Striegel (drums, percussion), Josh Drew (bass, guitar), Paul Boutin (guitar, bass) and James Cooper (synths, midi-drum programming). Looking For A Light was produced by Paul Roessler.”
