Soon afterthe recent release of “Outside Looking“, a charging, Night of the Living Dead-inspired first taste of PRISMATICS’ upcoming EP Endlessly out in January, the band is back with their second single. “Every Smiling Thing” leans further into the Missouri-based four piece’s mastery of psych-leaning dream pop while looking at both the harm and benefit of believing in everyday unexplained phenomena. While recorded at each member’s living space during stay-at-home orders earlier this year, there’s a prescient anxiety to the songs on Endlessly, especially given songs like “Smiling” were written well before the pandemic entered our everyday thinking.
Prismatics is a Missouri-based four-piece influenced by the new wave, dream pop, and post punk movements before them, but informed by harrowing realities of modern life around them. Earlier this year, vocalist/keyboardist Brooke Austen, guitarist/vocalist Josh Clark, bassist/vocalist Jo Bossi, and drummer Ben Stenberg were set to record the follow-up to their 2018 debut New Emotion when coronavirus took hold.
โMuch of the songwriting process began shortly before the pandemic took place,โ Austen recalls. โWhen the time came to record, we found ourselves miles away from each other and operating remotely.โ
Relying on a self-described Frankensteinโs monster of recording setups, the band had no choice but to try their hand at recording separately from their homes, eventually forming the songs on this Januaryโs Endlessly EP. Pulling from miscommunication in the social media age, the dichotomy of passive people turning into agitators online, and a longing to be authentically known, Endlessly is a modern answer for the urgent, yet accessible drive of new wave greats like Siouxsie and The Banshees and Echo and The Bunnymen.
Where first single โOutside Lookingโ (out now) barreled out as an all-too-relevant post punk anthem for craving escapism after a period of isolation, “Every Smiling Thing” takes the band’s ability to write effortless dream pop and looks into the everyday supernatural.
โEvery Smiling Thing grapples with ascribing supernatural meaning to both deeply healing and unexplained phenomena in life, as well as the seemingly mundane and even foolish,” Austen says. “What are the repercussions of seeing magic everywhere? What are the repercussions of never seeing magic at all? It’s about challenging both the reckless dreamer and the hardline logician.”
Endlessly arrives on vinyl, CD, and digitally January 15th.
