Love Crushed Velvet can’t get enough of your Saddened Eyes on their dreamy new single — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The first preview of the New York post-punk outfit’s upcoming album Souls And The Barren Heart (out July 22), Your Saddened Eyes explores the process of trying to find humanity, vulnerability and affirmation in love. “It addresses how we often try to be stoic in how we project ourselves,” says frontman and songwriter A.L.X. “Yet it’s in vulnerable moments when you truly see deep emotions in someone’s eyes that allow you to understand and read into their heart.”
Accompanying the single is a stirring new video shot using virtual reality technology, which alongside their recent video for The Future, makes Love Crushed Velvet one of the first artists to fully embrace VR in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. “When making the video, we decided to try to capture those sentiments in virtual reality, because the emotions and thoughts that drove the song felt like they could be best represented multidimensionally, rather than just boxing ourselves into trying to visually communicate what we are trying to get across via a conventional, two-dimensional screen,” A.L.X. explains. “At the time, I was drawn to the dichotomy of finding happiness through sadness, and the fact that you can have a foot in both emotions at the same time and have it still makes sense.”
The raw power of punk and the sonic blur of New York post-punk are back in full force with Souls and the Barren Heart. The new album sprang from spontaneity, and even in its polished form, that energy comes through. Like with their 2010 debut and followup EP, a fierce group of players were assembled for the album under producer David Maurice. Australian drummer Alex Carapetis (Julian Casablancas, Nine Inch Nails) anchors the group. Rob Ritchie and Erik Deutsch shape the textures on guitar and keyboards.
Love Crushed Velvet are the creative vision of A.L.X., a regionalist who believes in the power of varied music scenes and assembling different bands for different records — improvising, revising, consolidating — an organic approach that retains the spark of late night jams, of a musical rapport forming in real time. More than influences or even instrumentation, this is music fueled by the untamed chaos of urban life, by passion over precision. While the textures and colors of the music have shifted from record to record, A.L.X.’s hypnotic vocals are the through-line connecting the body of work as a whole: past, present and future, condensed into eight fierce songs.
Check out Saddened Eyes above, stream it on your preferred DSP HERE, sample more tunes from Love Crushed Velvet below, and take a look at their website, Facebook and Instagram.
