Minnesota pop-punkers Remo Drive are coming to the Fine Line 7/6. This homecoming show comes after the release of their sophomore album Natural, Everyday Degradation.
Since releasing their debut album, Greatest Hits, in 2017 (later re-released in 2018 by Epitaph Records), brothers Erik and Stephen Paulson have been pegged as one of the most captivating acts in the new-era indie rock scene, mixing the musicality of bands like Weezer, Title Fight, and The Police with the idiosyncratic lyrical tendencies of the genre’s more modern movement.
Greatest Hits, along with 2018’s Pop Music EP, took the band around the world with the likes of Saves The Day and Hippo Campus. All that time spent on toll roads and tarmacs left the brothers endless opportunities to think about how far their band had come in a short time – as well as plan for the future.
Perhaps most importantly, this time to reflect showed Remo Drive what they didn’t want to do on their follow-up. While Greatest Hits overflowed with wide-eyed nativity and whole-hearted enthusiasm, Natural, Everyday Degradation (out now on Epitaph) finds the Paulson brothers crafting a sturdier brand of indie-rock.
Produced by Joe Reinhart (Modern Baseball, Hop Along) and mixed by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol), Natural, Everyday Degradation doesn’t burn the Remo Drive playbook – it calibrates it to highlight the band’s true strengths. So Erik’s lyrics are still just as emotionally resonant and universally relatable as they were on Greatest Hits; here, though, they’re far more intentional and precise. Instead of letting off-kilter turns of phrase and nervous energy capture listeners’ ears, Remo Drive allow their confidence to take center stage.
“If Brandon Flowers actually did the things he wrote about on the first Killers album, he’d be in prison,” Erik laughs. “You don’t have to always write about yourself. You can tap into your emotions and use them to tell stories instead.”
So while the first-person pronouns can’t always be traced back to the band directly this time, Natural, Everyday Degradation still deftly encapsulates the growing pains unrelegated to a specific generation, musing on topics like self-identify, mental health, and a burning desire to prove doubters wrong.
