PRIESTS ‘NOTHING FEELS NATURAL’ LP

Ten tracks on this debut album by this post punk band from DC.

Writes Pitchfork: Fire-starting D.C. punks Priests started work on their transcendent debut several years before election day, so don’t blame them if Nothing Feels Natural feels relevant in the extreme at this moment. Since debuting with Tape One five years ago, the four-piece have never stopped shredding through corrupt power hierarchies and attempting to disentangle personal freedom from consumer choice. Across two tapes, a single, and an EP, they’ve used a deranged sort of surf rock to launch lucid, grimly funny exposés of the false binaries and systemic oppressions that built America. This, after all, is the band that screamed, “Barack Obama killed something in me and I’m gonna get him for it.” As we enter 2017, we’re in danger of tying every faintly despairing new piece of culture to the ascent of America’s Cheeto-in-Chief, as if January 20 flipped a switch that instantly soured all milk. But injustice wasn’t born earlier this month; it just became apparent to many who never had much cause to worry about it before. And the lyrics to Nothing Feels Natural show the existential weight of having spent a lifetime fighting. Priests’ debut has an entirely different energy from their previous releases, expanding into a rich diorama of stinging guitar, funk, yearning indie pop, and jazz. The leap in range and ambition from their 2015 EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power is huge: There hasn’t been a punk debut this certain and poised since Savages’ Silence Yourself.
Released 27. Januar 2017 on Sister Polygon Records SPR-021
Listen here: https://priests.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-feels-natural