PRE-ORDER VINYL RECORD: tinyurl.com/flr070

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FOR FANS OF: Bad Religion, Buzzcocks, Descendants, Drive Like Jehu, The Faction, The Fucking Champs, Gang of Four, Green Day, The Hives, Hot Snakes, Jawbox, The Jesus Lizard, Les Savy Fav, Lightning Bolt, Meatbodies, Melt-Banana, Metz, Osees, Pipe, Pissed Jeans, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Superchunk, The Thermals

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Blab School is a post-punk quartet from North Carolina. Their self-titled debut LP comes out on Fort Lowell Records on June 6, 2024. Taking philosophical cues from American post-punk bands like the Wipers and Talking Heads, also incorporating the goth-adjacent tones of bands like Joy Division and Killing Joke, and adding the often danceable and joyfully nihilistic aesthetic of 21st-century punk, Blab School makes music that is simultaneously urgent and fun, upbeat and crooked, loud and thoughtful.

Blab School came together after a drummer living in Durham, NC tentatively placed a Craigslist ad in hopes of starting a new band. Thus, the band started as (mostly) strangers from New York, California, and North Carolina: Guitarist and singer Ryan Seagrist from Discount and the Bis side-project The Kitchen; guitarist and singer Lizzie Killian’s from Glowing Stars and the still-thriving Teens in Trouble; drummer Dave Cantwell from many North Carolina bands since the early ‘90s, including Analogue, Cold Sides, and In the Year of the Pig; and bassist Fikri Yucel, formerly of Durham’s premiere faux-French new wave goth band, Veronique Diabolique.

Blab School recorded their self-titled LP in Fikri’s living room with Nick Petersen (who has recorded and mastered tons of NC bands, including Megafaun, Des Ark, HC McEntire, and several national acts like Bon Iver and the Melvins). It was mastered by Todd Rittmann (guitarist for US Maple and Dead Rider). “Scrolls” is a special track to the band because it was the first song Blab School wrote after people started getting vaccinated and coming out of the covid lockdowns. It is in some ways their most spontaneous and collaborative song: its chilly post-punk tone is tempered by the Blab School’s elation at a successful return to band life: rehearsals, shows, hanging out, and silly text threads. (The song’s “big dumb rock” ending is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but also an expression of sincere musical joy: when you listen to Blab School, hopefully the feeling makes sense.)

Since Blab School formed, drummer Dave moved to Carolina Beach, NC–almost three hours south of the rest of the band. But Blab School still keeps on going, rehearsing and playing shows at least as frequently as when they all lived in the same area. Dave says, “We’re a two-city band now, but maybe it makes us focused. And we kind of love it ‘cause now we can have twice as many venues to consider ‘home’. I mean, that’s more or less how we hooked up with Wilmington’s Fort Lowell and got this record out!”