Archers of Loaf is back with another album and song, hear Aimee here!
On October 21, Archers of Loaf will release their new album, Reason in Decline, via Merge Records. It marks the band’s first full-length studio album in over two decades. The LP was recently lauded in The New York Times’ Fall Preview, which noted that “singer-guitarist Eric Bachmann reclaims the band’s lovably ornery spirit, working in the hard truths of middle age.” In addition, Brooklyn Vegan included the LP in its “Albums We’re Anticipating for Fall 2022” feature.
Archers of Loaf tour dates - new dates in bold
Nov 29 – Ottobar – Baltimore, MD
Nov 30 – Underground Arts – Philadelphia, PA
Dec 1 – The Sinclair – Boston, MA
Dec 2 – Warsaw – Brooklyn, NY
Dec 3 – The Broadberry – Richmond, VA
Dec 4 – Grey Eagle – Asheville, NC
Jan 10 – Thunderbird Music Hall – Pittsburgh, PA
Jan 11 – Lee’s Palace – Toronto, ON
Jan 12 – El Club – Detroit, MI
Jan 13 – The Bottom Lounge – Chicago, IL
Jan 14 – Delmar Hall – St. Louis, MO
Jan 15 – Basement East – Nashville, TN
Feb 7 – Teragram Ballroom – Los Angeles, CA
Feb 8 – Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA
Feb 10 – Mississippi Studios – Portland, OR
Feb 11 – Mississippi Studios – Portland, OR
Feb 12 – Neumos – Seattle, WA
Throughout the LP, the band reshapes its powerful twin-guitar tumult into expansive backdrops that sparkle and cast shadows around Bachmann’s haunting ballads. Today they release “Aimee,” a dusty, fingerpicked ode that echoes plaintively in a light-streaked cave of plinks, flutters, and moaning guitar twang. Bachmann explains: “Right in the middle of an album about war profiteering, suicide ideation, modern propaganda and the struggle against anti-intellectualism comes this brief exhalation in the form of a tender, albeit dystopian, love song.”
Though Archers of Loaf have played a handful of reunion shows in the past couple of decades, the band is set to embark on their first tour in support of Reason in Decline this fall, and today they announce additional tour dates for 2023. The first leg kicks off November 29 in Baltimore and includes stops in Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, and Richmond before concluding in Asheville on December 4. The newly confirmed dates start on January 10 in Pittsburgh and conclude in Seattle on February 12. Along the way, the band will stop in Toronto, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Tickets for the 2022 dates are on sale now, and tickets for the 2023 tour go on sale Friday, September 30, at 10am local here. All shows are listed below.
Archers of Loaf previously shared the roaring “Screaming Undercover” and lead single “In the Surface Noise.” The tracks have seen support from, among other outlets, NPR, Under the Radar, No Depression, and American Songwriter.
After some reunion shows in 2015 reignited the band’s creative passion, Bachmann attempted to write new Archers material, but he just couldn’t do it. For him, the voice and identity of the band was trapped in the past.
“For Archers lyrics, songs, everything, I had to imagine I was this angry white curmudgeon college guy who hates capitalism and consumerism and has a broken heart,” he says. “He’s bitter about relationships, so he makes fun of things to seem cool. As I’ve aged, I’m far less like that anymore, but it is a part of my personality. I just wasn’t excited about re-energizing it. I used that guy as a starting point to get myself out of the gate, but in the course of writing the actual songs, he eventually went away.”
Unable to perform, tour, or earn, Bachmann had become the full-time stay-at-home parent of a toddler son, while his wife toiled as an ICU nurse. The change was profound. “I’m 51, I’ve been [writing and playing music] since I was 14,” he says. “I’ve been doing it for a living since I was 22, that’s 37 years. For the first time, when COVID happened, I couldn’t do it. It was a massive psychological setback, to the point that I had to get help. I already had a problem with suicide ideation, constantly thinking about this shit. And I’m not ashamed to say that. Thousands and thousands of people have the same problem. Anyway, all this got baked into the songs.”
The end result, Reason in Decline, is no nostalgic, low-impact reboot. When they emerged from North Carolina’s ’90s indie-punk incubator, the Archers’ hurtling, sly, gloriously dissonant roar was a mythologized touchstone of slacker-era refusal. But this new LP is an entirely different noise. In fact, it’s a startling revelation. Guitarists Eric Bachmann and Eric Johnson, once headstrong smartasses inciting a series of artful pileups on the band’s four studio albums and EP, are now a fluidly complementary, sonically advanced unit. Notably, Johnson’s signature trebly lines peal clearly above the din instead of struggling to be heard. Today, singer-songwriter Bachmann’s lyrics balance righteous wrath with a complex tangle of adult perspective. He still spits bile, but it’s less likely to concern scene politics, music trends, or shady record labels thwarting the dreams of a young rock band. Bachmann puts it bluntly: “What I really think about going back to the Archers and doing a new record is that the three other members of this band are awesome. It’s not about responding to the past or whatever our bullshit legacy is. I just wanted to work with these guys because I knew the chemistry we had and that we still have. I knew that was rare.”
