THE VACANT LOTS RELEASE NEW SINGLE ‘DAMAGED GOODS’
Following a premiere on Iggy Pop’s BBC 6 Music show, Brooklyn-based duo The Vacant Lots are officially sharing their new single ‘Damaged Goods’ today. Arriving off the back of recent single ‘Amnesia’, it’s a piece of minimalist post-punk/synth-pop lifted from the band’s fifth studio album ‘Interiors’, out October 13th on Fuzz Club. Watch the video, directed by Alexander Schipper, here:
“Damaged Goods is about integrating conflicting internal feelings. If you're saying you need an exit strategy and one lifetime is enough, that’s a whole other zone you're going to. On this album, I wanted to dig deeper than I had done before and really carve out the pain”, Jared Artaud says of the new single: “In Damaged Goods lines from other songs on the record are referenced and contrasted. We did this a lot on Interiors. I like how all the songs can interrelate with one another, and it gives this song and the album another layer of intimacy, depth and closeness.”
The 8 songs on ‘Interiors’ synthesise all The Vacant Lots’ past work while pushing forward into the future. It’s Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen’s darkest and most visionary work yet. Ethereal metallic synths and blistering electronics are driven by disco-on-downers dance beats lashed with gutter-rock guitar riffs and icy detached vocals with evocatively concise and lacerating lyrics. “I like writing songs you can dance or zone out to”, Artaud says: “That duality of individual listening and music played in a crowd has always attracted me. A cross between the club and headphones. Music for loners and lovers.”
Photo by Chris Hogge
Recorded over many sleepless nights and amphetamine-fueled mornings in the project’s isolated Brooklyn bunker home studios, ‘Interiors’ goes deeper into the band’s minimal is maximal aesthetic, with nods to 70s/80s punk and nightclub music ala Joy Division, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, Depeche Mode, and New Order. The album sees The Vacant Lots team up once again with Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher) on mixing duties, who also worked on the band’s last two albums, ‘Closure’ (2022) and ‘Interzone’ (2020).
Long-time supporter of the band and godfather of punk Iggy Pop perhaps perfectly articulated The Vacant Lots’ ethos when spinning the band on his BBC 6 Music show: “I like The Vacant Lots. They try a number of things to just make a musical mood. They’re really not going for ‘this is pop’ or ‘this is dance’ or ‘yeah man rock n roll’ or whatever it is. They just create a nice mood wherever they go.”
Outside of Jared Artaud's work in The Vacant Lots, he is also the Creative Director of the Alan Vega and Suicide estates – discovering, co-producing and mixing the lost Alan Vega albums 'Mutator' (2021) and 'Insurrection' (2023) as well as curating a collection of Suicide rarities for the recent 'A Way Of Life' reissue (Artaud being the one to discover Suicide's cover of Bruce Springsteen's 'Born In The USA'). Recently, Artaud co-produced alongside Hedi Slimane the exclusive soundtrack – an extended mix of Suicide's 'Girl' – for Celine's Le Palace FW23 runway show and has also facilitated or collaborated on Alan Vega / Suicide projects with fashion design companies including Marc Jacobs, Midnight Studios, Agnes B and Dries Van Notten.
UPCOMING LIVE SHOWS
Oct 19 - London, UK @ The Shacklewell Arms
Oct 21 - Paris, FR @ Supersonic
Oct 23 - Berlin, DE @ Urban Spree
‘INTERIORS’ ARTWORK
By Ivan Liechti