Dallas/Philadelphia-based indie-pop band Welcome Center have released their new track 'Losers', taken from their upcoming EP 'Talk Talk Talk' due next month on July 16th.
A cool fusion of indie and electronica, 'Losers' takes listeners on a journey through plucky production, disco beats. fun synths and euphoria. Wholesome vocals are layered well to engage the audience on first listen with playful melodies scattered throughout the track and a quality saxophone solo thrown in for good measure. This track is full of groove, funk and soul and is everything we love about discovering new music.
About the song Welcome Center's Jesse Smith says:
"Early last year, before the pandemic hit stateside, Aaron sent over some chords he played on a Juno-6 backed by this little electronic disco beat. I wrote the first verse/chorus to what would become Losers in 10 minutes. The rest of the song took 10 months to complete. We were both listening to ABBA & Jessie Ware a lot last summer. We wanted to write something a bit more disco than we had in the past-- an upbeat track with a simple chorus. I was reading 'Cherry' by Nico Walker & 'Norweigan Wood' by Haruki Murakami at the time, so I crafted this story about two forlorn lovers living on the edge of society, longing for a purity they never had. It's a bittersweet, coming-of-age tale about two addicts. I don't think that's immediately obvious thanks to the upbeat music-- which stands in stark contrast to the lyrics. That wasn't by design; it just shook out that way after dealing with everything that happened last year. Aaron and I tend to write maximalist music; we gravitate towards adding more colors to a picture to try and liven it up. But with the songs on 'Talk Talk Talk', we were really focused on removing excess and only keeping the parts that mattered. I think we got pretty close to achieving that on 'Losers'.
Jesse Smith and Aaron Sternick have a history of getting lost on America's oldest roads.Long before they were Welcome Center, Jesse & Aaron spent a decade exploring the hostel circuit of America. From one town to the next, the two absorbed whatever they could about the land they call home: How people from different cultures and countries think about America; what secret paths lead to unadulterated beauty along all five coasts; how to comfortably sleep in a car when you breakdown on the side of the highway; etc.
In 2017, the pair began sowing the seeds of a taut post-punk/synth-pop sound and watched that garden grow faster than imaginable. It wasn’t long before they found themselves back on those old roads– this time in support of their first EP, 'Disorder', as well as their first defining single, 'Is This All There Is?'. The American DIY scene was booming and Jesse and Aaron wholeheartedly embraced the opportunity to pay their dues and burn the candle at both ends. While they spent their nights in tightly crowded punk house basements, the duo continued to clock in to their 9-5 tech jobs by day, oftentimes continuing to work after soundcheck.
Nearly four years after that first tour, it’s been too long since the band has seen those highways again. 'Talk Talk Talk' is the result of that departure, looking outward to confront hard realities about the land they grew up in and channeling it into something more hopeful than before.
'Parasite City' challenges you to fight the urge to give in to all-consuming anxiety about the place you live. 'Burn' meditates on feelings of helplessness but finds faith growing out of the ashes. 'Losers' finds bittersweet joy in addiction and depravity before longing for youthful naïveté. 'Talk Talk Talk' is a glass-half-full vision of the year that was and the power of pushing forward with friends.
'Losers' is out now. Listen HERE @welcomecenterband
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