Today New York band Cymbals Eat Guitars announced their third album, LOSE, and from the sound of it, frontman Joseph D’Agostino has a lot to get out. That’s because LOSE was written and recorded (with longtime Dinosaur Jr. producer John Agnello still pretty fresh off Kurt Vile’s incredible Wakin On A Pretty Daze) as a way of coping with the death of his friend Ben High. High was working on his project Green Arrows and playing bass with Cymbals Eat Guitars in 2007 during early recordings of Why There Are Mountains with Charles Bissell (of the Wrens) when he suddenly passed away (you can read the Wrens’ tribute to him on their site). In a statement about the record D’Agostino described the writing process:

LOSE is a very apropos title because it refers not only to losing Ben, but also it’s about a sort of nostalgia, a longing for a time when music meant everything to you and your friends, and it seemed like one great rock record could change everyone’s life the way it changed yours. It’s about being in mourning for your long-held belief that music could literally change the world. That’s the contradiction at the heart of LOSE… You’re disillusioned, but somehow you can do nothing else but rail against that feeling mightily and try, once again, to make a record that makes you and everyone else “wake up wanting to listen to records.”

That pain is immediately apparent on the epic six-plus-minute opener “Jackson” from the moment the initial guitar rush clears and D’Agostino utters the album’s first fragile line” “You’re taking two Klonopin, so you can quit flipping.” This one song, the best I’ve heard from them, is so much that it’s difficult to imagine eight more are going to follow it. Listen below.

(via Pitchfork)

LOSE:
01. “Jackson”
02. “Warning”
03. “XR”
04. “Place Names”
05. “Child Bride”
06. “Laramie”
07. “Chambers”
08. “Lifenet”
09. “2 Hip Soul”

Tour Dates:
08/20 New Haven, CT @ Bar Night Club
08/21 Kingston, NY @ BSP Kingston
08/22 Rockville Centre, NY @ Vibe Lounge
08/24 Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes
08/26 Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right

Lose is out 8/26 via Barsuk.