The Districts

The Districts today shared the third single from their forthcoming new album Great American Painting: the billowing, rhythmic “Outlaw Love,” which features backing vocals by Clementine Creevy of Cherry Glazerr. Out now alongside its Luke Orlando-directed video, the song “is about reassessing the past and realizing how much of your perception is colored by your particular set of experiences and beliefs. Who was right and who was wrong? Was it love or a web of lies?” says singer/guitarist Rob Grote. “Life is this weird, fucked up journey, constantly changing and constantly realizing you were wrong or followed a false messiah, but there’s a lot of beauty in our ability to shift and grow through observing ourselves and our patterns. I’ve been hurt by people I love and given more than I should at my own expense, but ultimately wouldn’t trade it for the lessons I’ve taken away from it all.” Great American Painting—the band’s fifth album, produced by Joe Chiccarelli (Spoon, The Strokes, Broken Social Scene) and recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound in Los Angeles—will be released on March 11th, 2022 (recently moved back from February due to manufacturing delays), via Fat Possum. 

“Outlaw Love” kicks off a busy 2022 that will see the Philadelphia-based band touring across the UK, Europe, and North America (a full itinerary is below). The song also follows additional singles “Do It Over” and “I Want To Feel It All,” which caught the attention of Consequence, Brooklyn Vegan, Under the Radar, WXPN’s The Key, and more. 

Great American Painting is the rare album that shines a bright light on all that’s wrong in the world but somehow still channels a galvanizing sense of hope. With equal parts nuanced observation and raw outpouring of feeling, The Districts confront a constellation of problems eroding the American ideal (gentrification, gun violence, the crushing weight of late capitalism), ornamenting every track with their explosive yet elegant breed of indie-rock/post-punk. Threading that commentary with intense self-reflection, Great American Painting ultimately fulfills a mission The Districts first embraced upon forming as teenagers in small-town Pennsylvania: an urge to create undeniably cathartic music that obliterates hopelessness and invites their audience along in dreaming up a far better future.  

Mostly made up of songs sketched by Grote during his time in a Washington state cabin at the height of the pandemic, Great American Painting marks a significant departure from 2020’s acclaimed You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere. “The last album almost felt like a recording project of my own rather than a band affair, so from the start the goal was to focus on what’s always worked well with us: an element of simplicity that’s still very powerful, with a lot of visceral rock-and-roll energy to it,” says Grote. To that end, Great American Painting endlessly spotlights The Districts’ greatest assets—the sharply detailed and prismatic tones of guitarist Pat Cassidy, the complex yet combustible rhythms of drummer Braden Lawrence and former bassist Connor Jacobus, who has since amicably departed the band (Lawrence will switch to bass in the band’s live show)—while introducing a new subtlety into their sound. “We usually love to just keep making everything louder, but this time there was a lot more attention paid to carving out space within the songs to really showcase each instrument,” Grote points out.

In the making of Great American Painting, The Districts found their sense of connection exponentially intensified. “It just felt so nice to spend time with the people I care about, to have fun and try to make something good for the world,” Grote says. That feeling of kinship and solidarity is something the band hopes to extend with the album’s release. “The thing I value most in music is when an album expresses some sort of pain or frustration or hope that I also feel,” he explains. “I hope this album makes people feel like something within themselves is reflected in the wider world, and I hope that makes them feel less alone.”