Savants released their debut LP New Junk City via Narnack Records last week. Two years in the making, the effort finds the Brooklyn-based band really using the studio to expand and refine their highly creative approach to post-punk. While the group evocatively sketched the outlines of urban dread on their cut “Sneak E. Gardner,” off the the group’s split 7″ with Tomorrows Tulips, this new long-player finds Savants really fleshing out the nightmare of life in the metropolis.
“Urban City Living” says it all, really. “It’s 5:30 am and I’m walking to work/It’s 4:30 am and I’m ironing my shirt/It’s 3:30 am and I’m lying awake.” With the rat race this bad, popping a pill to cope just becomes muscle memory while each day bleeds into a low-grade misery. “We are the inmates/We are the gods,” sings the band, before declaring, “Urban city living shouldn’t be this hard.”
While whip-smart lyrics and wry wit abound, this track also reveals just how tight the band is. Savants have kicked around the NYC scene since 2013 having played over 100 shows “from gritty clubs to house parties to pizzerias” in the process. These foundational years show up in the ease with which this band digests their varying influences into a varied but creative whole. Time in the studio seems to have also contributed to the band’s cohesion, and the result on a song like “Urban City Living” is a thrilling amalgam of post-punk that somehow sounds familiar and new all at the same time.
