Kerosene Heights - Blame It On The Weather

Kerosene Heights have announced their second full-length, Blame It On The Weather.Due out August 15th on the band’s new label home SideOneDummy, the album was announced with the single “New Tattoo,” which earned praise from outlets like Stereogum, who compared the band to Joyce Manor and Glocca Morra, and BrooklynVegan, who said that the bands “upcoming SideOneDummy debut is not to miss.”

Recorded by Billy Mannino (Oso Oso, Prince Daddy & The Hyena, Macseal) at Two Worlds Studio in Queens, NY, Blame It On The Weather certainly showcases just how good the chemistry of the band is now. There were certainly hints of it on Leaving, but a little extra time to be together has truly solidified it. From opener “Sunsetting”—a beautifully, hopelessly romantic but pained song that lives up to its title—through to the renewed hope of the boisterous, cacophonic closing title track, this is a record that flourishes from the connection between its members. It sounds, at times, chaotic and messy in the way that life is chaotic and messy, but really it’s incredibly precise and controlled. A lot of that is down to Bennis keeping everything tight from behind the drumkit.

“Benji’s drumming style in this band totally solidified it,” says Smith, “and gave us something that we didn’t have. It’s just distinct, especially within our genre, and it feels inseparable from our band at this point.”

“Kerosene Heights was a band that I liked very much before joining,” says the drummer, “so I definitely felt some imposter syndrome at first. It was crazy for me to get the call and to be a part of it now for a little over a year, but this has been the easiest process joining a band I’ve ever experienced.”

“But this has also been a more kind of collaborative project,” adds Franklin, “and it’s been great seeing what each person is able to bring to the table.”

Buoyed by that free-flowing chemistry of collaboration—something Bennis puts down to the “magic of Asheville”—the band have crafted a truly exceptional second record. Not only does it succeed in Kerosene Heights’ tongue-in-cheek mission of resurrecting the ghost of acclaimed but short-lived emo screamers Grown Ups, it also goes far beyond that. In fact, it carves out the band’s own unique place within the scene through a series of devastating emotional blows that pick you up even as they throw you to the floor—a kind of ragged euphoria. Listen to the noodly emo-punk of “Forget It” or the raw, cathartic and desperate sincerity of “Waste My Time”, the defiant survivalism against the odds of “Sink” or the raw rush of emotions of “Die Trying”, the roughshod anthemics of “Ghosts” or the searching energy of that title track as it confronts, once and for all on this record, the ephemeral nature of life, and it’s clear this is a band who have a lot to say and, most importantly, who know how to say it, who have found the balance between happiness and sadness, darkness and light, resignation and hope.

‘I know nothing lasts forever anymore/I used to think that it could,’ sings Smith in the chorus of that final song, and it’s both brutal and beautiful. Because there’s a simultaneous sense of comfort and despair in that lyric and its delivery, something that sums up the push and pull of this album perfectly, the friction between the extremes of life that inspired it. In other words, it captures what it’s like to both feel and be human.

“I think what Chance does really well,” says Thompson, “is write songs in the same way that humanity is writing songs—the highs and lows of relationships, losing people, the way things change.”

“We like to say that our band is about how love wins,” adds Smith. “Ultimately, I always want a positive throughline on our records—the sense that things can get better—because they do tend to do that. Because being in this band makes me happy. It’s really hard to make it, but I think it’s worth doing. So I hope people feel comforted and not alone in their bad feelings when they listen to this—and also feel pushed to pursue whatever they want.”