This week’s Friday First features the full-length album Slip Away from Bushwick babes gone big, Total Slacker. Friday First is a weekly column premiering brand spanking new releases from local, national, and international bands.
Total Slacker’s second album hit the airwaves earlier this week on Black Bell/ADA Records, following 2011’s lo-fi debut Thrashin’. The band is known for their quirky sense of humor, and they dissect a whole new variety of ironic pop culture topics on Slip Away (with song names like “Super Big Gulp” and “Who Killed Kennedy”) but the album also has emotional songs. That side of the record is largely influenced by the death of their drummer, Terrence Connor, who passed in the summer of 2012, a hit and run bike tragedy in Bushwick. Following the buzz of their leading single, “Keep The Ships at Bay” (which Paris Hilton retweeted and signed off with a “loves it!”), the album falls in suit – a moody, rock-ragged, coasting, shoegazey ’90s rock album. Without all the fuzz of their debut, Slip Away has cleaner edges and sharper sounds, the guitar solos tearing songs apart in a completely empathetic way. Rock on, TS!