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'Light On' Track Listing:
1. The Wind
2. Can't Get Enough
3. Light On
4. Post McDonalds Punks
5. My Dying Days
Tour Dates:
June 8 - Nashville, TN - Stone Fox @
June 13 - Raleigh, NC - Kings Barcade
June 14 - Norfolk, VA - Jewish Mother Backstage #
June 15 - Richmond, VA - Strange Matter $
June 16 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie
June 18 - Brooklyn, NY - Glasslands %
June 19 - New York, NY - Piano's ^
July 16 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle *
@ w/ Majestico $ Today's Shits
# w/ Sunny & Gabe and The Dahus
$ w/ The Catalyst, Bad Coyotes & The Nervous Tick
% w/ Heliotropes & Fan-Tan
^ w/ Conveyor
* w/ Magic Milk and Plastic Visions
Praise For Bad Cop:
"t's a soulful, greasy, howlin' whiteboy kind of rant-rock that's even greater than the sum of all its crazy parts, a frantic, no-holds-barred, 'fuck the rules' kind of album that we desperately need right now..." - Impose
"The Nashville trio’s debut is filled with the kind of youthful abandon that only sub-21-year-olds can capture, but this excitement is matched with a musical maturity that gives their songs a weight beyond their years." --Performer Mag
"Tennessee does a different sort of blues rock, and Bad Cop has taken the southern, hot-amp sound to a place most people
wouldn't take it. Adam Moult entered the elevator of blues rock, ran his fingers up and down all the buttons, threw a Molotov cocktail into the roof, and let the fire rain down on him as he descended into hell. If Jack White ever needs something more evil, he’ll find it somewhere just south of where Bad Cop’s elevator car landed." -- Ear Milk
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It’s the middle of winter and Adam Moult is hiking barefoot through the snow of the North Georgia mountains, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. This isn't a juvenile dare -- Adam is 15 years old, and the instructors at the boarding school where he's been sent are forcing him to do this in order to 'teach him a lesson.' This is the origin of Bad Cop, the group Moult founded as an escape from the horror show of his teenage day-to-day at the grim Hidden Lake Academy. "The teachers at the school realized that one of the things that pacified me was letting me have a guitar for a couple of hours a day," he explains. "So that's where I started writing some of our first songs."
After Moult left Hidden Lake, he met fellow outcast Alex Hartness. The two struck up a fast, close friendship and began writing together, creating a core of songs that combined the recklessness of Moult's heroes Darby Crash and Kurt Cobain with the keen pop sensibilities of The Strokes and The Buzzcocks. Their raucous live shows quickly earned them a reputation in Nashville, which was bolstered by the success of psych-punk breakout single "Daylight." Their anarchic spirit stood a striking contrast to the well-scrubbed scene, but their dalliances with darkness weren't entirely without consequence. "Alex and I had been getting into using opiates," Moult says. "We were on our way to a show in Chicago and we were just partying out of control. We just mixed too much stuff. I woke up at about 6 and I heard Alex, like gasping. So I go over there to look and he's turned blue. And I just freak out." Though Hartness was briefly pronounced dead, he was miraculously revived moments later with no lasting damage.
The episode caused the group to refocus and, after solidifying the lineup with bassist Mike Frazier and drummer Kevin Kilpatrick, they found themselves on tour playing for thousands opening for Cage the Elephant. "It was the first time in my life I had something go right," Moult laughs. "I finally felt accepted. Seeing all those people, I realized that there are more people like me than the people I grew up around. I felt like I was speaking for them and represented them."
That confidence extends to the group's latest EP Light On. Produced by Cage the Elephant's Brad Shultz, it's a bright, vibrating effort full of high-wattage guitars and jittery rhythms and, beneath it all, that palpable sense of anarchy. The EP is being released on Jeffery Drag, a label owned by the band and distributed through the French Kiss Label Group, home of Les Savy Fav, The Dodos and more. Light On serves as the perfect introduction to the group's ethos: "Can't Get Enough" bounds and swivels like a 21st Century rocakabilly song – Carl Perkins by way of Pissed Jeans. Ironically, the song was written during a stint in jail – a detour that would sandbag other artists, but which gave Moult the time he needed to clear his head and get healthy. That optimism is reflected in the song's blazing tone. "This was my attempt at an Elvis song," he says. "I really relate to that dude: he's from Memphis, he had a problem with drugs, which he was taking to block out his troubled past. I mean, in a lot of ways, he was the first punk." On "Post McDonald's Punks," the group stretches out into social commentary: over slashing guitars that call to mind both METZ and Jay Reatard, the group dismantles quick-fix culture and the collapse of the American Dream. "The Wind" careens like the best Phoenix songs, its bright sheen scuffed up by Moult's beer bar sneer.
Elsewhere, things get darker still: the title track unflinchingly recounts the night Hartness OD'd. Over a nightmare carnival calliope organ, Moult pleads, "I said 'Don't Go,'" before the song plunges into its chilling chorus: "Light on, I still hear you breathing." "That line couldn't be more direct," Moult explains. "It is literally about how Alex was still breathing when I found him." The song feels like a fever dream, Moult's emotions ranging from icy panic to relief to regret ("I still kill myself in my mind.") But if there's a song best that sums up the spirit of the album – and of Bad Cop in general – it's "My Dying Days." A loose groover with the swagger and strut of early Supergrass, the song is less a lament and more a celebration.
"This record is me coming to the end of the negativity and knowing and accepting that there's something better," Moult says. "Just because I've gone through some bad shit doesn't mean it's always going to be that way. There is an opportunity to change." It's that newfound optimism that powers Bad Cop, a band that helped Moult and Hartness, a pair of social outcasts, find their place in the world. "I want people, when they're listening to us, to feel free and alive," Moult says. "I want people to take away this feeling of freedom – to let go of these things in our mind that say, 'I've got to be this way, I've got to look like this.' Let's forget about that bullshit and just be people. Let's dance, let's love, let's smoke, let's smile. Let's be alive."
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