Illiterate Light + Liz Cooper

It’s dangerous to put Illiterate Light in a box, especially with the release of their new album, Arches. Are they a guitar-driven indie rock duo? Kaleidoscopic neo-psychedelia? Synth-kissed, harmony-laden folk? What does one do with an album beginning with “fake tits and diet coke,” then pivoting to train derailments in rural Ohio and never-ending black holes? These prolific farmers-turned-rockers have captured the energy of their live shows—fans crowd-surfing, moshing, crying, and crooning—and infused it into their latest release.

Illiterate Light’s third album, Arches, is not a passageway but an arrival. “We’re no longer striving to define a sound,” said drummer Jake Cochran. “We’re leaning into sides of ourselves that have felt off-limits, sticking to what feels right rather than concerning ourselves with comparison.” Out November 1 via Thirty Tigers, the record is bursting with thunderous anthems, biting lyrics, and lush harmonies..

Arches was recorded in two very different locations: small-town Appalachia at Gorman’s home studio and Hollywood, CA at Sunset Sound with producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Strokes, Beck, The Killers). “We wanted the best of both worlds,” says Gorman. “We spent several days with Joe at Sunset. To record vocals in the same live room as so many of my heroes—Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Dylan—was unreal. I knew I was in a holy place.” The LA session was paired with sessions in Virginia, where Gorman and Cochran co-produced the bulk of the record with longtime collaborator Danny Gibney. In their hometown, they experimented with soaring instrumental journeys and had friends sit in on the sessions to keep things lively.

LIZ COOPER

On the porch of her one-time Nashville home, Liz Cooper had a multimedia project that combined two of her loves: lips and cigarettes. She painted her own lips with red paint and kissed a canvas two or three hundred times, later dotting them with the detritus left behind in ashtrays by her friends. An overlap of intimacy, indulgence, cheekiness, and sensuality, the piece complements Cooper’s roiling second record, Hot Sass. Over jagged, frenetic guitar parts, Cooper sets expectations aflame with the record’s title track. Her songs unfurl like smoke spiraling off an incense cone late in the afternoon, with Cooper pushing deeper into psychedelic openness, punk ferocity, and beyond.

Hot Sass marks multiple departures for Liz Cooper: from her nine-year home of Nashville, from her band addendum of the Stampede, from any genre-burdened expectations she’d accumulated over the years. After heavy touring in support of 2018’s Window Flowers, where her songs stretched out in live settings, she felt constricted by the Americana-adjacent associations that the Stampede carried. So with her bandmates’ blessing, she dropped the moniker, pursuing sounds and songs that let her chase the inspiration lent to her by the likes of Courtney Love, Lou Reed, and David Bowie.