DEEPER
BIO
What do you do when pain blots out joy? How do you learn to take care of yourself? What happens when the things you think are helping end up doing the most harm?
When Deeper put out their self-titled debut in 2018, they weren’t ready to approach these questions; by their own admission, they were still trying to discover their collective voice. The group — singer and guitarist Nic Gohl, guitarist Mike Clawson, bassist Drew McBride, and drummer Shiraz Bhatti — were all graduates of Chicago’s rich DIY scene who came together around their love of Wire, Devo, Gang of Four, and Television. Clawson and Gohl were longtime friends who’d met in high school, and whose percussive, fractalized guitar lines already seemed like a private language. Bhatti learned to fit stipples of drumwork in where he could, while McBride gave the group its sense of locomotion. Deeper would take them out of the basement and on national tours with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and The Districts, and they’d share the stage with Jeff Tweedy in Chicago.
When it came time to start work on their second album, hammering out the same sounds didn’t feel like enough. They wanted to find a way to alchemize the pressures, anxieties, and stresses they felt in their lives into their music.
Auto-Pain is an album about learning how to suffer. It’s also an album about learning how to feel better. The snow-gray synths that blow across the album suggest that it’s not always easy to see the difference. “The whole idea of Auto-Pain was taken from Brave New World,” Gohl says. “They have soma, which makes you feel nothing, but auto-pain makes you feel everything. Let’s feel everything and see what happens at the end of it.”
MUSIC
Deeper's Auto Pain: Deluxe Edition reframes the liminal spaces of the Chicago quartet’s searingly-nuanced sophomore effort about grief and resilience into a densely-layered perspective of emotional maximalism fearless in its vulnerability. The deluxe edition includes remixes from fellow ascending artists Working Men’s Club, PVA, NNAMDI and more as well as two stripped-back demos and live versions from the band’s performance at the Chicago Cultural Center in March 2021. While the original version delivered a masterclass in razor-sharp post punk, the expanded record gives a glimpse into a lens of a year full of adversity and the growth and perspective that draws these songs together to pack a powerful, personal punch. Auto Pain: Deluxe Edition is out September 3rd on Fire Talk.
Limited to just 500 direct to fan copies! Spot gloss gatefold jacket w/ printed inner sleeves, updated artwork and liner notes & pressed on two ultra limited variants.
Deluxe package includes 5 remixes, 2 demos and 6 live recordings, full track list on the inner flap of the gatefold image below.
What do you do when pain blots out joy? How do you learn to take care of yourself? What happens when the things you think are helping end up doing the most harm? 'Auto-Pain' is the Sophomore album from Deeper, a record that finds the band embracing open space, using synths to create shadows where bricks of guitars once would’ve blocked out the sun. The group — singer and guitarist Nic Gohl, bassist Drew McBride, and drummer Shiraz Bhatti — were all graduates of Chicago’s rich DIY scene who came together around their love of Wire, Devo, Gang of Four, and Television. While the new record is still within the Great Lakes post-punk tradition of their debut, the album isn’t as insular as its predecessor; it’s less interested in pile-driving and more willing to dwell in liminal spaces. Guitars enter the picture precisely, locked bass grooves propel things forward. Drummer Shiraz Bhatti, who is half-Pakistani and half-Native American, embraced the drumming patterns he’d heard growing up at pow-wows, channeling the anxieties of his heritage into his playing and keeping the group grounded when they switch into all-out percussive attack. The result is an album both more nuanced and catchy.
Auto-Pain represents the constant wave of depression felt by many in everyday life. Stemmed from Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, Auto-Pain is a concept meant to be an inverse to soma, a pill in the book which makes everything numb. The idea of auto-pain is to epitomize the desire to return to a connection with thoughts and clarity, which comes at the expense of feeling everything simultaneously. The album artwork features the now-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago capturing the band’s rounded-off brutalism, and the album title appears in Urdu, a nod to drummer Shiraz Bhatti’s Pakistani heritage. The record was recorded and mixed by Chicago scene luminary Dave Vetraino (Lala Lala, Dehd) and mastered at Chicago Mastering by Greg Obis (Ne-Hi, Melkbelly).
A portion of the proceeds from Auto-Pain will be donated to Hope For The Day an organization that actively works to break the silence surrounding mental health.
The debut album from Chicago based Deeper. Origins of the project date back to 2014 where the band has made their mark locally supporting like minded acts Omni, Protomartyr, Chris Cohen & fellow Chicago powerhouses Whitney & Ne-Hi. Fresh off official after show appearances at Pitchfork & Lollapalooza the band is poised to jump out wide with this debut record. 9 tracks channel the anxiety and uneasiness of modern life in this pit of endless internet, chiming post punk rave ups with pointed "of the times" lyrics & gorgeous ambient interludes woven in.
Even the tightest relationships are susceptible to unexpected change. “Run”, a new single from Chicago’s Deeper, examines what happens when we’re forced to confront the reality of these relationships and find the courage to walk away for the better. It’s not easy to abandon that image of who we thought we were, but it’s the leap into the unknown that’s the first step to self-actualizing. At first the song wrestles with identity amidst uncertainty, but as it progresses, a confidence emerges that has become the driving force for where Deeper is headed. Backed by an astutely scientific cover of the John Maus rarity “Bennington”, Deeper sheds the searching bottled up in previous material, carving out an ambit distinctly their own. Brisk, pointed and efficient, and no note wasted, “Run” b/w “Bennington” a new 7 Inch out in October 2019 sets the stage for the Chicago trio’s sophomore LP.
*This Item is Pre Order - Ships on or before October 4th 2019
Limited to a one time pressing of 500 copies on translucent red vinyl.
