Collapsing Scenery announce new album Stand Up Tragedy out September 5

Collapsing Scenery announce new album Stand Up Tragedy out
September 5 on Metropolitan Indian

Releases new single & video "Magic Button"

Watch: "Magic Button" video at YouTube
Stream: "Magic Button" on All Digital Platforms

Brooklyn/LA synthwave duo Collapsing Scenery, are excited to announce their new album Stand Up Tragedy out September 5 on Metropolitan Indian (pre-order). Today the band is sharing the album's lead single "Magic Button" and its accompanying music video which was directed by Charlotte Ercoli. The song debuted today at Post-Punk and is on all digital platforms for playlist shares.

On the song and video the band's Reggie Debris says:

‘Pressing the magic button’ is old CIA slang for assassination. This is a song about unintended consequences, blowback, and imperial hubris. After decades of engendering insurgencies, rogue states, rebellions and civil wars, we have learned no lessons from our myriad foreign policy failures. We are caught in an endless cycle of retribution and reaction, punctuated by hasty attempts at cleanup and moral grandstanding.

Collapsing Scenery, formed by Reggie Debris and Don Devore (Ink & Dagger, Frail), delivers their unique hybrid of political commentary and boundary-smashing genre fusion. Fusing punk, techno, shoegaze, industrial, and acid disco, Stand Up Tragedy is both urgent and unrelentingly creative. It captures the anxious emotional landscape of the current moment, reflecting not just a world in crisis, but the personal reckoning that comes with living through it.

Much of Stand Up Tragedy was written during the pandemic era, and its themes carry the weight of that experience. “This record is definitely born of a lot of personal pain,” Debris shares. “It has that apocalyptic feeling—we weren’t sure if making music or art still mattered. Everyone was sealed off, and no one knew if live performance would even return.”

Some tracks stem from the same sessions as 2023’s A Desert Called Peace, yet they felt, as Debris notes, “part of a separate body of songs”—one that responds to the cultural hangover left in the wake of global trauma. The new album serves as both a continuation and a deeper dive: a more bitter, more emotional reflection on a society still struggling to process collective grief and political fragmentation.

From the jittery punk of “Job’s Dungheap” to the dreamy synthscapes of “The Acceptance World,” the 10-track record moves fluidly between sonic worlds. Other highlights include the slacker post-punk of “Uncanny Guest,” the euphoric pulse of “On Your Knees,” and the haunting ballad “The Ballad of Debbie Campbell.” It’s an album that rewards focused listening, structured intentionally to unfold with narrative weight and sonic tension.

Lyrically, Stand Up Tragedy continues Collapsing Scenery’s tradition of wrapping sharp political insights in poetic abstraction. “We’ve always had a mission to be overt in our politics,” says Debris, “but I think my lyrics have become a bit more oblique—there’s this strange dream logic to life now, and sometimes abstraction or poetry is the only way to describe the insanity we’re all living through.”

Since forming in 2013, the duo has released a steady stream of EPs and LPs, collaborated with a wildly eclectic mix of artists including Genesis P-Orridge, Tippa Lee, Jennifer Herrema, DAM, Miho Hatori, and James Chance and developed a reputation for fiercely creative live performances and visuals. More than a band, Collapsing Scenery functions as a multi-sensory, multimedia project aimed at reimagining what music can be in the digital age.

In a time of shrinking attention spans and algorithm-driven listening, Stand Up Tragedy dares to be a fully realized album with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s an immersive experience—and one that captures the disorientation, rage, love, and longing of life in 2025 with clarity and conviction.