Paste is premiering a brand  new song called “Bad Ideas” from Saintseneca’s anticipated new album Such Things which arrives this October 9.
The song is a stripped down primal merging of early punk sensibilities, pure hook driven pop and some unabashedly earnest folk.
As the band’s songwriter and singer Zac Little explains, “Our previous album Dark Arc was just hundreds of layers. But this record is played by a band. And with “Bad Ideas” we wanted to make the song with the least amount of elements. Musically we were exploring the power of minimalism and the riff.”
The song is accompanied by a graphic interpretation of the track by Paste Magazine illustrator Julian Dassai turning the band’s propulsive sound into vibrant comic book form. Listen to Saintseneca’s “Bad Ideas” and see the artwork via Paste .
Such Things is the follow up to the band’s critically acclaimed album Dark Arc, of which American Songwriter wrote “Ohio’s Saintseneca is a band apart. Led by multi-instrumentalist Zac Little, they play a unique brand of folk-inspired post punk that has an aged patina but is as sharp as a brand new knife” and Rolling Stone simply proclaimed a “gem.”
Moving away from Dark Arc’s layered structures, Such Things is a decidedly more raucous and collaborative affair incorporating the creative energy and input of an entire band playing.
As Little explains, “I was pushing myself to explore the pop motif further, to try to use and bend that formula of having a groove, a beat, locking in and using that as scaffolding to build a song. And even though it oftentimes might seem like this singular vision, at the core my creative strategy for the band is one that inherently involves other people. I think the best work I’ll make involves working that way.” And all those disparate pieces and parts come together, like so many molecules, to form a solid rock object called Such Things. You can hold it in your hands and hear it in your head, this culmination of beautiful moments and fluctuations of energy and information, compressed and etched into an LP sleeve and eternity and all tied up in a great rock and roll record.
Saintseneca will be touring North America in support of the new record starting this October.
US Tour Dates
10/2: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, San Francisco
10/7: Club Cafe, Pittsburgh 10/8: Black Cat, DC
10/9: Mercury Lounge, NYC
10/10: Johnny Brendas, Philly
10/11: Daryl’s House, Pawling NY
10/13: The Haunt, Ithaca NY
10/14: 9th Ward @ Babeville, Buffalo NY
10/15: The Garrison, Toronto ON
10/16: Blind Pig, Ann Arbor
10/17: Empty Bottle, Chicago
10/18: Cactus Club, Milwaukee
10/20: 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis
10/21: Reverb, Omaha
10/22: The Bishop, Bloomington
10/23: Northside Tavern, Cincinnati
10/24: Grog Shop, Cleveland
12/4: Newport Music Hall, Columbus OH
European Tour Dates
11/21: Le Guess Who – Utrecht (NL)
11/22: London Fields Brewery – London (UK)
11/24: Night and Day – Manchester (UK)
11/25: Nice N Sleazy – Glasgow (UK)
11/26: Brudenell Social Club – Leeds (UK)
11/27: The Louisiana – Bristol (UK)
11/28: Mutations @ The Haunt – Brighton (UK)
11/30: Merleyn – Nijmegen (NL)
12/1: Stubnitz – Hamburg (D)
12/2: Vega – Copenhagen (DK)