Latest news with #BadSuns
Scoop
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Indie-Pop Mainstays Bad Suns Announce New Album 'Accelerator'
Today, indie-pop mainstays Bad Suns announce plans to release their new album ' Accelerator ' out on August 8th via Epitaph Records. More than a decade after their debut, on their joyous fifth album the Los Angeles trio are taking stock of everything they've been through together as a band and pushing into a bright future with a renewed sense of purpose. Bad Suns also share the hook-packed gem 'Slow Karma' which doubles as frontman Christo Bowman's mission statement for Accelerator. An intimate and cathartic track, the album opener finds Christo at a personal and professional crossroads as he confronts old habits and makes a life-changing decision. 'I was at a point in my life where it was becoming abundantly clear to me that I needed to make some changes in order to progress and live the life that I really wanted,' Christo says. 'Getting sober is really hard, but then it quickly becomes the most rewarding thing in the world. 'Slow Karma' is about accepting that this is gonna be difficult. And I don't know exactly what's ahead, but I know this is the direction I'm supposed to be moving down. I can't control the world around me, but I can control the way that I react to the events taking place and the way that I move through the world.' Since 2012, Christo Bowman (vocals/guitar), Gavin Bennett (bass) and Miles Morris (drums) started making music together as teenagers and went viral almost immediately with their magnetic blend of indie-rock and '80s synth sheen. After four hit albums, the trio reached a point where they needed to recalibrate and recenter if they wanted to continue. Recording their exuberant 2023 EP Infinite Joy was a cleansing experience that served as fuel for Bad Suns and set them on a thrilling path forward into making Accelerator, which comprises 12 new tracks brimming with dance-pop hooks and poignant lessons learned. 'We saw the Infinite Joy EP as a new beginning for the band. I felt this yearning once again,' reflects Christo Bowman. 'Accelerator being our fifth album, our first studio album as a trio, and the first album of my 30s, we knew that this was going to be really important. We didn't want to take that lightly. We asked ourselves, how do we live up to the occasion? We saw this album as a mountain we wanted to climb.' Following the lead of previously released track 'Communicating' (currently #30 on the alternative rock charts), anthemic opener 'Slow Karma' reveals a riveting pop turn for the band, showing how Accelerator is still steeped in the original DNA that made Bad Suns a feel-good viral sensation with early hits like 'Cardiac Arrest.' The rushing pop melodies may mirror Accelerator's title, but its lyrics are filled with stop-and-think moments where Christo surveys his past actions and makes the intentional choice to embrace personal growth and impending fatherhood. 'My 20s were a challenging time with a lot of peaks and a lot of valleys,' he says. 'There's a lot of joy, a lot of mistakes. This album is ultimately about finding the strength within yourself to assess the damage that's been done and make the changes that you need to in order to take control of your own life.' As Bad Suns move into their latest era, one filled with exciting personal and professional milestones, they've never been more harmoniously aligned. 'While making this album, I turned 30, I got married, I found out I was having a kid,' the frontman muses. 'Going to the studio every day and being in the room with the guys, I had this sense that I'm going to look back and know that was probably one of the best times of my life.'
Boston Globe
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
FINNEAS spreads his wings on a solo tour
Advertisement Calling from Los Angeles the day before he embarked on a solo tour across the United States – which pulls up to Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I'm not always living my own advice there,' he says, referencing his aversion to workaholism. 'That's probably a kind of intense way to work.' 'Intense' is the right word to describe the skyward trajectory of O'Connell's career, although he seems to joyfully lean into that intensity. It's been six years since he and his sister became a world-renowned tag team via Eilish's multi-platinum record 'WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?', which included the slinky megasmash 'bad guy.' Understandably, O'Connell says his career has already reached 'somewhere that I never thought I'd get.' For some artists, surpassing all personal expectations before age 30 would incur an existential crisis. Instead, O'Connell says he feels unintimidated by his early success. 'I think your dreams should be linear and you should explore things that are interesting to you – and if you achieve something that you hoped to achieve, you should be proud of that and then maybe try to move on with your life,' he says. 'I don't think you should be trying to always be in some opportune spot or location or something. I think you should just be working on things that you're happy to work on.' Advertisement Finneas performs Feb. 21 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway. Muriel Margaret While the artist hasn't abandoned any one sound or creative medium, his recent output demonstrates that he's not content to tread an award-winning rut, either. Now that O'Connell feels confident with his chops as a pop producer, he embraces being 'a novice in the scoring world.' Composing music for visual media like 'Disclaimer' is a welcome learning experience, one that he likens to developing 'a different muscle group' in a new workout. O'Connell is still doing reps in the pop/rock world, though. 'For Cryin' Out Loud!' balances striking balladry with breezy toe-tappers, true to the Eilish-O'Connell family's knack for molding vulnerability into undeniable earworms. But unlike his 2021 record 'Optimist,' which O'Connell wrote and produced himself, he approached his latest record as a venture among close friends, and invited folks like Bad Suns drummer Miles Morris and Aron Forbes, a longtime collaborator of Eilish, to join him. In addition to singing, O'Connell flexed his multi-instrumentalist skill set across the album, playing keyboard, percussion, synthesizer, guitar, and bass on various tracks. 'For Cryin' Out Loud!' began to take shape in the first week of some studio sessions with his collaborators in Los Angeles, yielding songs like '2001' and the fluttering album closer 'Lotus Eater.' Another early tune to emerge, the drifting and delicate number 'Little Window,' O'Connell says has been one of the biggest joys to play live. O'Connell has previously described the record as 'hyper-collaborative,' although he says his sister remains his 'favorite person to work with in any capacity.' When they perform together – as they did at the Grammy Awards two weekends ago, where he and Eilish played her nominated song 'Birds of a Feather' – the natural ease of their collaboration shines in their stage presence. (It's no surprise that when asked which musical family he wants to go down in history alongside, O'Connell cites the legendary brother-sister duo the Carpenters). The 2021 documentary 'Billie Eilish: The World's A Little Blurry' broadened the view of their relationship to include their parents, thwarting any misconceptions about an unhealthy family dynamic. Advertisement 'People [who watched the film] saw our parents for who they are, which is incredibly thoughtful, kind people,' O'Connell says. 'I think there's a lot of understandable wariness of stage parents, so to speak, in the music industry, and I get that. I would probably be wary of that, too, if I were somebody else. But I think people kind of being like, 'oh, wow, they're really not like that at all' was a satisfying experience.' While the pair doesn't work intimately on his solo music in the same way that they do when crafting Eilish's records, her input is still a valuable resource to O'Connell. 'She's a busy person, so I don't bug her very often about my music,' he says. 'I try to let her, you know, exist. But I always play her stuff if she asks to hear anything – I play it for her and super respect her opinion, so [I'm] always happy to have it. If she has a favorite song, that matters a lot to me, I lean into that one. If she is disconnected from something, I want to know about that, too.' Advertisement O'Connell then hints at a new project that they're currently working on – 'another can't-talk-about-it scenario,' as he explains it. Which is fine, because with his United States tour on the horizon, followed by a jaunt across Europe, O'Connell has plenty on his plate. 'Playing a sold-out tour is dreamy and crazy and amazing to me,' he says. 'I'm playing bigger venues than I thought I would play. We're playing the [Hollywood] Palladium on this tour – which is a nice big venue in L.A. – and a nice big venue in Boston. Again, that's such a joy, and I don't take it for granted.' FINNEAS With Bad Suns. At MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston, Feb. 21, 8 p.m. $50.75,
