altopalo share frenemy LP via Nettwerk featuring Bartees Strange + contributions from Dora Jar

Photo by Christopher Fenimore
September 24 2022

PRAISE FOR altopalo

“With garbled singing, shuffling electronics, and fragments of conversation, the Brooklyn band’s new album dwells on ordinary and universal moments of alienation.”

Pitchfork

“a lush, ethereal wave of dream pop bliss”

Atwood Magazine

“sublime”

Grimy Goods

“Bass lines are reversed, voices are pitched in different directions, and percussion is smashed into other sounds to create unfamiliar new modes”

FADER

“…with the tinges of R&B, soul and pop filling out the meticulously constructed, cavernous rock soundscapes”

Billboard

“one of the most original bands working today”

CLASH

“the junk drawer in your house if it was music: bewildering and wondrous”

NYLON

TRACKLISTING
1. Altopalo
2. love that 4 u (ft. Bartees Strange)
3. starfish in low tide
4. frenemy
5. time together
6. time alone
7. wya?
8. petty i know
9. table talk
10. over & over
11. hope this email finds you well
12. waitin 4 u
13. 300 mi

frenemy is out now via Nettwerk, buy/stream it here.

altopalo today share their anticipated, genre-fluid frenemy LP via Nettwerk. They’ll celebrate the release with a hometown show in New York, as well as shows in Los Angeles and Chicago. LISTEN/WATCH HERE.

frenemy is timeless in the way it transforms familiar indie rock/electronic soundscapes into something new. Sometimes it twinkles and sometimes it grinds or glitches. It’s thoughtful, but even more playful. Over the course of the new LP, altopalo breaks down masculinity, chosen-family dynamics, and a decade of growing both together and apart.

WATCH: waiting 4 u

About frenemy, drummer Dillon Treacy says candidly, “this is the first album where I actually know all the lyrics. over the other albums I’ve always felt not necessarily unattached to them, but they always felt specific to whoever was writing them, which is great, but I believe this album really gets to how the four of us feel being in a band / friends in a way that the other albums have not, and it makes me happy.”

Veterans of the New York scene, the four members of altopalo – lead singer Rahm Silverglade, guitarist Mike Haldeman, bassist Jesse Bielenberg and drummer Dillon Treacy – have racked up tens of millions of streams and made fans at Pitchfork, FADER, Stereogum, Nylon, Billboard, Brooklyn Vegan, and more for disintegrating the boundaries of genre, folding in elements of R&B, electronica, ambient and jazz through their deconstructionist approach to guitar-driven music. All four are professional studio & touring musicians outside of the band as well, working alongside and fostering a growing community of incredibly talented artists including Dora Jar, Moses Sumney, L’rain, Bartees Strange, Jon Batiste, Amber Mark, & more.

frenemy, was in part inspired by the following but not limited to: freight trains that passed the house where they recorded the music – long long short long – and their horns, astroturf, a black Chevrolet express van named “honk”, sand dunes, Lake Michigan at sunset, being naked in the water, Settlers of Catan board game pieces, a big blue party bluetooth speaker, Taco Bell and more. Through today’s release, altopalo have done what they do best, creating meaningful, textured, indie-electronic collages that encompass their personal experiences, including overtures to friendships (“Altopalo”), and diss tracks to themselves (“love that 4 u ft. Bartees Strange”). Altruistically motivated to dissolve the confines of heteronormativity, altopalo has fashioned a vessel for open dialog between band-mates, friends and listeners alike.

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