Giving Up will release their new LP, Garner Cardinals, on February 16 via Sophomore Lounge Records.
Unlike their earlier outings in the LP format – the charming yet head-scratchingly produced debut Gthrowing Up (2009) and better but nearly aborted follow-up [peace sign / frown face] (2012), both cursed with more coincidental oddities and studio mishaps than a tragi-comedy classic rock mockumentary – Garner Cardinals is a statement made on the band’s own desired terms. Engineered by their touring drummer Dusty Van Ness in the comfort of his Minneapolis home (and mastered by Mikey Erg), the record is a best-of-both whirlwind delivering DIY bedroom grunge aesthetics with a self-puffed studio sheen. Serving not only as a natural stepping stone from the dumpster-fi fog of a Jad Fair-fronted Screeching Weasel tape boiled to perfection in a roadside hotel tub exhibited on recent tour trinkets, but also as a “coming of age” mark for Poland’s idiosyncratic song-kraft.
Garner Cardinals is both littered with and colored by images of Giving Up’s own little America – an unknowingly large yet strangely intimate midwestern wasteland layered with spray-painted alters, misoriented gravestones, natural beauty, body dysmorphia, hamburger sunsets, small-town bad news, battery-operated memories, haunted mansions, shameless fantasies, forever-friendships, and an ultimate sacrifice of going deaf for what they love.