Okay Lindon shares the first single/video from its forthcoming self-titled full-length for Lost in Ohio. Watch/listen to “Pinto vs. Pinto” here.

Dustin Smith had this to say about it:

‘Pinto vs. Pinto’ was originally the result of a songwriting challenge a bunch of my friends did during the covid lockdown. Our friend Noah mailed us each a torn page from the 1978 Book of Lists and we each had to write something from whatever we got. The one I got had this two or three sentence anecdote about a wrestling heel named Stanley Pinto that gets tangled in the ropes entering the ring and is counted out before the match even starts.
 
On the surface the Stanley Pinto story is almost a joke, but I kinda saw this angle where maybe we could have a little sympathy for this guy, so I painted him as a tragic character instead of a punchline. That felt very on brand for us and made it a good fit for this record.  

Fourteen years after their last full-band album, Okay Lindon return with the record that finally gets to carry their name. 

The self-titled Okay Lindon is the fourth proper full-length from the Cincinnati band, and the first to feature the full five-piece since 2012’s Everything Will Work Out Fine. It serves as both a reintroduction and a vindication: a melodic, searching, unpretentious Midwestern rock record from a group that sounds less like they are trying to recapture something than finally trusting what was there all along. 

The first three Okay Lindon LPs, released between 2009 and 2012 and mixed by Jason Martin of Starflyer 59, were tracked meticulously and with great care, but with members now spread across 60 miles of Ohio and Kentucky, the reunion started almost by accident. Singer Dustin Smith proposed a simple structure: meet the first Sunday of every month, bring one mostly-written song, and see what happens.

Everything was tracked live in guitarist Chuck Smith’s basement with no isolation and no second-guessing. Two sessions in, it was clear the process was working. What started as a casual experiment turned into a full album. 

The resulting record has the looseness of a band playing in real time and the confidence of people who no longer need to prove they belong in the room together. It’s guitar rock with a human pulse: melodic enough for fans of Starflyer 59, Land of Talk, The Frames, or Pedro the Lion, and rooted in the same unhurried Midwestern sensibility that made those first three records worth owning in the first place. 

Okay Lindon arrives July 24 via Lost In Ohio on limited edition Petrol Blue vinyl. Purchase it here.

Photo courtesy of Odinsauga.