Strangepride is a Brooklyn-based trio made up of Anthony Tinnirella, Dan Frelly, and Rob Hellyer. Though Tinnirella and Frelly also play in Katie Ellen — which Anika Pyle and Frelly formed after their old band Chumped broke up — they’ve also been building Strangepride up over the last several years. Amidst gigging in New York and touring elsewhere, Strangepride released a couple songs in 2017. And today, they’re back with their debut full-length, We’ll Take It From Here.

The new album features those 2017 singles, “Hoops” and “The Ungluing,” amidst another eight tracks that synthesize a couple different eras and genres. Across We’ll Take It From Here, you’ll hear the occasional trace of new wave, some Britpop, ’90s American indie, tinges of Americana; one passage in “Hoops” is reminiscent of the National as Tinnirella slips into his lower register, another is more akin to Built To Spill. A song like “Sit Still” rushes forward with garage-y abandon, while “Adirondack” is a melancholic reflection carried by yearning guitar lines and a string arrangement. The overall result is a scrappy, heartfelt collection that most often locates a middle point between these touchstones, ultimately existing in a lineage of classic indie college rock aesthetics.

The stuff that’ll likely hit you first would be the songs driven by sugary, feverish hooks and scraggly guitar layers. And while there are certainly some direct, punchy tracks here, there’s also some more introspective and/or cathartic moments. Strangepride identify their favored topics as “loneliness, existential uncertainty, loss, grief, and, yes, pride.” The themes of loss and grief are particularly important on We’ll Take It From Here. Much of the album was created in the wake of Tinnirella losing his mother in 2016.

In the years since, Tinnirella has worked through processing his mother’s death and his own life afterwards, which in turn informed the music he was writing. Here’s what he had to say about We’ll Take It From Here and what went into it:

I read somewhere that the grief process takes anywhere from six months to three years or something like that. For me it was pretty much three years to the day and this record is a document of the different phases my brain went through over that period of time — whether it be anger, sadness, regret, or just a different way of perceiving the act of growing up after the loss of a loved one. And there’s a relationship song or two peppered in for good measure.

There’s an interesting contrast across the album, music trying to maintain a kind of youthful fervor, even innocence, while reckoning with the life events that hit us as we get older. Today, you can hear the whole thing for yourself. And along with its release, the band have also shared a homemade video for one of the album’s standouts, “Daisies And Blue,” a jangly and infectious track that recalls early R.E.M. Check it all out below.

TOUR DATES:

09/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Anthorna Gallery
09/16 – Washington, DC @ Slash Run
09/17 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Roboto Project
09/19 – Columbus, OH @ Mush Mansion
09/20 – Bloomington, IN @ The Blockhouse
09/21 – Chicago, IL @ The Swamp
09/22 – Akron, OH @ Tone Zone
09/23 – Buffalo, NY @ Milkie’s
09/24 – Albany, NY @ Paulie’s Hotel
09/25 – Brooklyn, NY @ Alphaville

CREDIT: Fran Linkin

We’ll Take It From Here is out today. It’s available on Strangepride’s Bandcamp page.