For a decade now, Mike Chick has been leading the Asbury Park indie rock band Yawn Mower; their sophomore album I Just Can’t Wait To Die came out last year. Chick also makes solo music. He released his own full-length More Thrills, Less Hills in 2024, and now he's getting ready to follow it with a new one called Congarts. (For once, that's not my typo. That's what the album is called.)
Chick recorded Congarts over the course of about a year, in between his work on other projects, and a Real Human Jazz Band's Martin Howth sings backup on every song. Last month, Chick shared a video for the lo-fi, drum-machine-driven power-pop tune "Tomorrow Is All A Blur," and that turns out to be the lead single from the LP. We didn't post it then, so here it is now:
Pretty good, right? Here's Chick in a press release, talking about making another solo album so soon after the last Yawn Mower joint:
I just came to the point where I wanted to be working on music all the time. I don’t want to take any breaks from it. If I’m not writing or recording with Yawn Mower, I want to be working on at least demos of my solo songs. I’ve learned a lot in regards to the process of recording over the last few years and am grateful to have a setup that allows me to record whenever I find the time. I consistently chipped away at Congarts for a few hours here and there, and before you knew it the thing was almost done.
If you just want to work on new music all the time, then Guided By Voices would have to be a pretty good model. Today, Chick announces the impending release of Congarts, which comes out next month, and he shares the jittery, homespun new wave song "Atom Bomb," along with his cover of GBV's "Teenage FBI" from their Ric Ocasek-produced 1999 album Do The Collapse. Check out both tracks below.
Congarts is out 4/17 on Mint 400.
