New York City-based rock band
The So So Glos are excited to present the official music video for “
Dancing Industry,” the opener on the band’s recently released, critically acclaimed studio album,
Kamikaze. Helmed by
Charlie Ahearn, director of the classic 1983 hip-hop film
Wild Style, and featuring the
W.A.F.F.L.E. crew, “Dancing Industry” is an exciting glimpse into the world of street performance art captured within a bustling New York City subway car. The video, which can be viewed on Vevo
HERE, comes in the middle of the band’s current North American headline tour that will extend through the end of the month, culminating in a performance with
Big Ups at Great Scott in Boston, MA on Sunday, June 26. A full listing of remaining dates can be found below and information on tickets can be found on The So So Glos’ official website
HERE.
Recorded with John Reis (Rocket From The Crypt, Drive Like Jehu) and mixed by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley, Cursive), Kamikaze features some of the Glos’s rawest songwriting yet that includes themes surrounding heartbreak, hurricanes, climate change, nervous breakdowns and more. There’s a glimpse into one band member’s stay at an inpatient mental rehabilitation center (“Inpatient”), songs about feeling disillusioned by the concept of moral compromise, the dungeon that is the music business (“Fool On the Street”), and songs about sticking to your ideologies (“Missionary”).
On the new album, the follow-up to The So So Glos’ critically acclaimed Blowout from 2013, Kamikaze is an album that finds the band narrowing its focus, kicking harder and faster, all serving to punctuate their subversive merging of sarcasm with sincerity, spirituality with social awareness. “Kamikaze is about using our self-imposed weapon,” says So So Glos frontman Levi Zaru (Aleksander). “Which is music, which is art, which is freedom of expression, which is respect for the individual … all that is a weapon.”
Being surrounded by the apathetic, plastic, too-cool attitude that permeated New York City’s underground of the early-‘00s changed the Glos bros’ approach to punk rock forever—inspiring them not only to dive head-first into Brooklyn’s ethos-first scene of DIY all-ages spaces but to write charged-up fight songs prying open big questions about the society around them, to write anti-establishment calls-to-action.
“That concept of self-awareness, acknowledging it in order to combat the problems you see in yourself and the world, is a theme that runs through a lot of our music and our message,” Aleksander continues, reflecting on the path to Kamikaze — a path that has made it all the more embedded with meaning.
As always, though, the members of The So So Glos – Levi Zaru (Aleksander) (lead vocals, bass), Ryan Zaru Levi (guitar, backing vocals), Matt Lasser-Elkin (guitar), Zach Assa-el Staggers (drums) – have made a perfect party soundtrack, if your idea of partying involves screaming against the world of distractions and psychic destruction that surrounds us.
The So So Glos are currently touring North America in support of Kamikaze. Dates below.
JUNE
18 – Toronto, ON – Smiling Buddha #
19 – Rochester, NY – The Bug Jar #
21 – Baltimore, MD – Ottobar #
22 – New Haven, CT – The Bar #
23 – Philadelphia, PA – Philmoca #
24 – Jersey City, NJ – Monty Hall #
25 – Brooklyn, NY – Market Hotel #
26 – Boston, MA – Great Scott #
# = w/ Big Ups
