Bret Koontz & Truancy Club (ft. members of Fran, Famous Laughs) have announced their new LP, A Sparkle Road Cult, out November 18 via Earth Libraries. The sound at the center of A Sparkle Road Cult is Bret’s voice. It’s an idiosyncratic writer and composer’s voice that has shades of the outsider sounds of Robert Wyatt, Syd Barrett, and Arthur Russell. The accompanying arrangements bring to mind the songcraft of the Carpenters and Prefab Sprout-esque Sophisti-Pop shaken up/down by a touch of the large format boogie of Wings and raw Power Pop of Big Star.
To kick off the album cycle, the band has shared its first single, “Strange New Love (below)” that hits home with an endearing mix of ’70s pastoral and sparkling lo-fi. Speaking on their newest single, the band wrote:
“‘Strange New Love’ is a song about endings and beginnings: it reflects on that moment at the end of a relationship or important phase when something wider comes into focus– your relationship with the world and life itself. Have you been keeping up with the world? Been a stranger to life?
Impressionistic vocals, classical guitar, flute and strings paint a lush portrait of the exhilaration and risk of this moment that hints at Gilberto & Getz and the Left Banke in equal parts.”
The band’s newest single also comes alongside a gorgeous animated music video, on which they wrote:
“The delicately animated music video frames the song as being about something beyond romantic love, exploring instead a metaphysical and even paranormal connection. An underground musician has a close encounter of the fourth kind.”
