Oh yes, new Institute day is a good day. I've been wanting to post the heavy jangle, effects-lite punk shit that is Institute since I became editor of the Austin Deli, but their (no-holds-barred good) last EP Salt came out in October of 2014, which was just barely, annoyingly out of the range to be considered "news."
Today though, with a fist-shake of gritty happiness, I'm here to say that the wait is over. There is new Institute, and it's them at their fuckitall best. The new track from Sacred Bones Records is thoroughly appropriately titled "Cheerlessness," and as opposed to Salt, which often had Institute sounding like a band made up of people each about to fall apart at the seams in a really good and satisfying way, this new track is tighter and more determined.
The singing, or whatever you'd call that nicely out-of-it noise they're making, still seems like it's coming from a depressed drunk who stumbled upon a microphone just after getting hit in the head by a large human, but now he's in his third song and just doesn't even care enough to put energy into his shit until he just loses it at the end. There's true emotion of the kind the title espouses here, something you really get with the exasperated breath into the mic at the end, and that they layer that whole modern malaised man sound over a non-stop breackneck, clenched-asshole beat and wails from a guitar that sounds like it's dying is just damn good fuck the world punk. Listen below y'all, and get you a beer and a good brick wall alley slouch goin' to make it feel right. The rest of the album, called Catharsis is out June 9th, and you can get tour dates here.
