This week, Chris Broach announced a series of singles and splits with a variety of bands and labels this year. With a focus on guitar-driven, dynamic, poly-rhythmic, and odd-timed songs that “just feel right,” the first of these songs, “Rock Has A Shelf Life,” sees release digitally today, March 22 via a partnership between New Granada Records and Sweet Cheetah Records.

Buy or listen to it here.

In recent years, Broach has released music with more electro-tinged bands like SNST and The Firebird Band, but with these singles, we see his sights moving back to guitar. In truth, these songs highlight what made Chris Broach’s contributions to Braid so complementary and crucial –simply, they’re catchy, groovy, and incredibly strong. Best of all, he’s promised to continue down this path for the foreseeable future, as he focuses on doing one song at a time at his own studio he calls Mass Energy (located outside of Chicago, Illinois). 

In his words, “It’s a different approach to how I’ve done it in the past where I’ll write a whole album and figure out the details in the studio and at home in bits and pieces at a time. Instead, I’m focusing on writing from the guitar – working on each song until it’s finished, delivering it, completely finished, to a label, and then starting the next one.”

Chris Broach is probably best known as the co-frontman of Braid who toured last year in support of the 25th anniversary of the release of Frame & Canvas on Polyvinyl Records. He’s also the frontman and co-founder of The Firebird Band, L’Spaerow, and  SNST.  Broach joins Braid on a tour of Japan this month to complete Braid’s Frame & Canvas  25th anniversary tour – and will perform with the band at Best Friends Forever Fest in Las Vegas in October of this year (2024). 

Next up, Chris will release a split 7″ with The 1984 Draft on May 10 via Poptek Records/Sweet Cheetah Records. Pre-orders launched this week.

Photo by Sonja Broach.