After months of online mystery, buzzing alt-outfit late night drive home announce their debut album as I watch my life online will be released on June 27 via Epitaph, alongside its first single “terabyte.” A glitchy yet crystalline rumination on an addiction to adult content, the band finds themselves in an unending cycle of seeking online validation and destroying their self-worth. If love is the drug, the band’s drug tolerance keeps climbing. Try as they might to justify the dependence, they know they need to quit in order to establish real-life relationships.
“A lonely creature searches for love and yearns to be understood in and at every corner of his world,” shares Portillo about today’s single. “Two different people exist on each side of the screens both trying to live in this modern world.”
A criticism of their adolescence always existing in the shadow of the internet, the upcoming 13-track offering codes together vignettes of mistaking online connection for something real. With their success outgrowing the bedrooms they used to create in, late night drive home’s debut album is the first time they’ve worked in proper studios. And with this growth, we see them move from the indie-rock bucket to a more expansive, electronic realm.
“Over-exposed and over-stimulated, desensitized to what is real and what is fabricated, desensitized to the simple things,” flows off lead singer Andre Portillo’s tongue about the forthcoming album. “This constant need for more of you has become a Pandora’s box in this modern age. I’m obsessed, you mean so much to me and without you, I would be staring at a different reflection in the mirror. You’ve made me. You’ve destroyed me. I sometimes wonder why I can’t live without you.”
late night drive home was born in El Paso, Texas, and Chaparral, New Mexico, hardworking communities where folks built their houses by hand and collars were mostly blue. In the same way that their neighbors did what they needed to get by, late night drive home taught themselves to create music as an escape from the slow, rural life.
