Stephen Malkmus’s new band The Hard Quartet announce debut album
After announcing their formation, Pavement leader Stephen Malkmus’s new band, The Hard Quartet, have revealed details of their self-titled debut album.
Their eponymous debut album arrives on October 4th via Matador Records. The announcement has also been marked by the band releasing the band’s second single, ‘Rio’s Song’. A slower number than their debut single, it sees Matt Sweeney take on lead vocals as opposed to Malkmus. It is a chiming, more emotional singalong than its predecessor, complete with Jim White’s expressive drums.
The band says of the song: “The ‘Rio’s Song’ video is The Hard Quartet’s homage to street rock in the hot afternoon & clowning around with lifer friends in downtown New York City. Director Jared Sherbert shot it guerrilla style on St Mark’s Place and in The International Bar on July 15 2024. It features local NYC artists, musicians, activists, skaters and icons who are dear to the band”.
Following a series of cryptic social media posts, on July 30th, The Hard Quartet made their existence official and released their debut single ‘Earth Hater’, a gritty number featuring a grooving rock riff and Malkmus’s typical off-kilter vocals. It also arrived with a surreal claymation video from Eyedress, the visionary singer-songwriter whom Sweeney has interviewed on his show, Guitar Moves, in the past.
The Hard Quartet, are without any confusion, a supergroup. Helmed by vocalist and guitarist Malkmus, revered for his work in Pavement, Silver Jews, The Jicks and other projects, they also feature Sweeney, another celebrated guitarist who has worked with the likes of Chavez, Guided by Voices and Johnny Cash, and contributed to the cinematic music for Red Dead Redemption 2.
Joining them is songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Emmett Kelly, best known for his efforts in The Cairo Gang and The Double, as well as Bonnie ‘Prince Billy’, Ty Segall, Rob Mazurek and more. Rounding out the group is drummer Jim White, who collaborates with Warren Ellis and Mick Turner in the instrumental rock band Dirty Three, as well as Bill Callahan, Cat Power and Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto.
In a surreal, jocular style typical of Malkmus, The Hard Quartet said after they confirmed their existence: “The Hard Quartet is a band. But what is a band? A band, perhaps, can be thought of as a body, a corpus, in which physically discrete lifeforms comprise a chimera that shrieks with one voice.”
The band are set to play their first shows in October, with a trio scheduled in Los Angeles, New York and London. Their date in the English capital is on October 22nd at Camden’s Electric Ballroom, and for those who cannot make the trio of performances, they will be touring “extensively” across the world in 2025.
The Hard Quartet tracklist:
- ‘Chrome Mess’
- ‘Earth Hater’
- ‘Rio’s Song’
- ‘Our Hometown Boy’
- ‘Renegade’
- ‘Heel Highway’
- ‘Killed By Death’
- ‘Hey’
- ‘It Suits You’
- ‘Six Deaf Rats’
- ‘Action For Military Boys’
- ‘Jacked Existence’
- ‘North of the Border’
- ‘Thug Dynasty’
- ‘Gripping the Riptide’
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