The Dream Syndicate Release Mind-Bending New Album 'These Times'
Los Angeles’s The Dream Syndicate is thrilled to release These Times today, their second album of new music since their 2012 reunion nearly thirty years after they first influenced California’s Paisely Underground scene. If 2017’s How Did I Find Myself Here was a 10 pm record, all swagger and cathartic explosion, then These Times is the 2 am sibling, moodier and more mercurial with the band acting as DJs of their own overnight radio station as the listener drifts off into dreams and wonders the next morning if any of it was real.
“When I was writing the songs for the new album I was pretty obsessed with Donuts by J-Dilla,” lead singer and songwriter Steve Wynn explained. “I loved the way that he approached record making as a DJ, a crate-digger, a music fan wanting to lay out all of his favorite music, twist and turn the results until he made them into his own. I was messing around with step sequencers, drum machines, loops—anything to take me out of my usual way of writing and try to feel as though I was working on a compilation rather than ‘more of the same’. You might not automatically put The Dream Syndicate and J-Dilla in the same sentence, but I hear that album when I hear our new one.”
The Dream Syndicate recorded These Times once again at Montrose Studios in Richmond, Virginia. Co-produced by John Agnello (Phosphorescent, Waxahatchee, Hold Steady, Dinosaur Jr.), Wynn wrote all of the song’s lyrics in the studio after the band finished tracking, so that the words would be dictated by the sound rather than the other way around. This process contributed to the urgency of the album’s title.
“Not content to deliver ‘The Days of Wine and Roses 2019’ [The Dream Syndicate] have emerged with a vibrant collection of songs that ranks among the best the veteran group has recorded,” PopMatters said of These Times. “This is not a band competing with its past but instead carving out a bold new future.”
The Dream Syndicate has a long and storied history. But where are they right now? They’re here. Right here. In These Times.
TOUR DATES
5/7 – Los Angeles, CA – Amoeba Records In-Store
5/10 – Washington DC – U Street Music Hall
5/11 – Sellersville, PA – Sellersville Theater
5/16 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge
5/17 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge
5/18 – Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom
5/30 – Milwaukee, WI – Collectivo
5/31 – Chicago, IL – The Hide Out SOLD OUT
6/1 – Chicago, IL – The Hide Out SOLD OUT
6/18 – Ancona, Italy – Corte Mole Vanvitelliana
6/19 – Milano, Italy – Circolo Magnolia
6/20 – Cesenatico (FC) – Arena Cappuccini
6/21 – Fiorano Modenese (MO) – Teatro Astoria
6/22 – Rome, Italy – Monk Club
10/13 – Oslo, Norway – Rockefeller
10/14 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Loppen
10/15 – Hamburg, Germany – Nochtspeicher
10/16 – Berlin, Germany – Lido
10/17 – Utrecht, Netherlands – Tivoli Vredenburg
10/18 – Paris, France – Petit Bain
10/19 – Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique
10/21 – London, UK – Scala