The Vacant Lots Unleashed New Album “Interiors”

Photo by Chris Hogge

Following the release of recent singles ‘Amnesia’, ‘Damaged Goods’ and ‘Evacuation’ Brooklyn-based minimal post-punk/synth pop duo The Vacant Lots are released their fifth studio album ‘Interiors’ via Fuzz Club.

The 8 songs on ‘Interiors’ synthesise all of the band’s past work while pushing forward into the future. It’s Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen’s darkest and most visionary work yet. Ethereal metallic synths and blistering electronics are driven by disco-on-downers dance beats lashed with gutter-rock guitar riffs and icy detached vocals with evocatively concise and lacerating lyrics. “I like writing songs you can dance or zone out to”, Artaud says: “That duality of individual listening and music played in a crowd has always attracted me. A cross between the club and headphones. Music for loners and lovers.”

Long-time supporter of the band and godfather of punk Iggy Pop perhaps perfectly articulated The Vacant Lots’ ethos when spinning the band on his BBC 6 Music show: “I like The Vacant Lots. They try a number of things to just make a musical mood. They’re really not going for ‘this is pop’ or ‘this is dance’ or ‘yeah man rock n roll’ or whatever it is. They just create a nice mood wherever they go.”

Recorded over many sleepless nights and amphetamine-fueled mornings in the project’s isolated Brooklyn bunker home studios, ‘Interiors’ goes deeper into the band’s minimal is maximal aesthetic, with nods to 70s/80s punk and nightclub music ala Joy Division, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, Depeche Mode, and New Order. The album sees The Vacant Lots team up once again with Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher) on mixing duties, who also worked on the band’s last two albums, ‘Closure’ (2022) and ‘Interzone’ (2020).

Outside of Jared Artaud’s work in The Vacant Lots, he is also the Creative Director of the Alan Vega and Suicide estates – discovering, co-producing and mixing the lost Alan Vega albums ‘Mutator’ (2021) and ‘Insurrection’ (2024) as well as curating many releases, such as the collection of Suicide rarities released with the 2023 ‘A Way Of Life’ reissue. Recently, Artaud co-produced alongside Hedi Slimane the exclusive soundtrack – an extended mix of Suicide’s ‘Girl’ – for Celine’s Le Palace FW23 runway show and has also facilitated or collaborated on Alan Vega / Suicide projects with fashion design companies Marc Jacobs, Midnight Studios, Agnes B and Dries Van Noten.

Source: thoughtswordsaction.com