So So Modern Announces ‘Light Years’ EP
Pōneke post-punks So So Modern return with their first new material in 13 years – the Light Years EP. Out on October 9th, the EP will have an exclusive vinyl release courtesy of a recent ongoing collaboration between Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records – each with their own exclusive colour variant, limited to 150 copies of each.
Pre-Order Flying Nun Pink + White Vinyl LP
Pre-Order Holiday Records Orange + Black Vinyl LP
Light Years is So So Modern’s latest offering. A collection of songs written in the decade since their last release, the twenty-something-year-old post-punk band have for years defied convention for how a group should operate or sound. Today the band resembles less the four young, unknowing friends who started this journey in the mid-2000’s but more an extended family, bound through intersecting lives and close-knit community.
The musical landscape has since overtaken them with speed and saturation, but SSM have stuck to the path of the slow and steady – because time beats everything. Whilst the band’s sound has garnered a reputation for complex, chaotic convergences of guitars, synthesisers and rhythm, the songs in Light Years are about clarity, restraint and simplicity – an acknowledgement and misremembering of the straightforward hardcore punk and pop that inspired them as teenagers.
Short, structured and delivered with earnest power, today’s lead single, Peace Talks reflects on coming-of-age within fringe communities – the late 90’s / early 00’s Aotearoa hardcore, DIY & straight-edge scenes, goth flats & anarchist squats – friends are, after all, the family you choose.
Light Years represents time, distance and the entanglement of life, although it is unclear if this is in relation to a distant past or the horizon of the future. The limited 12” vinyl release by Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records is accompanied by the illuminating artwork of Lily Paris West.
Pre-Order / Pre-Save Light Years
To celebrate the new body of work, the band will also be selling the first ever So So Modern wearable merch, featuring an exclusive design by all-time friend and national treasure, Toby Morris.
SSM will be performing at Great Sounds Great festival on 5th September, and will then celebrate the release of Light Years in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington on 7th November at Newtown Community Centre. More details to come at a later date.
Photo Credit: Si Moore
