The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis have announced their second collaborative album ‘Deface The Currency,’ arriving February 20 on Impulse! Records. This new album preserves the tightness and variety of their critically-acclaimed self-titled debut album but reveals new levels of confidence and risk over seven tracks. ‘Deface The Currency,’ a statement of vigor, sensitivity, and spontaneity, results from the band playing 150 shows together in one year. The lead single “Gestations” is available now with an official video. To celebrate the album announcement, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis have announced a headlining tour across North America kicking off April 17 in Portland, Oregon. The Messthetics were formed in Washington, D.C., drawn together by mutual admiration: Anthony Pirog had grown up listening to Fugazi, the era-defining post-hardcore band anchored by the rhythm section of now-bandmates Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, while the bassist and drummer heard the genre-spanning guitar visionary play around town and took note of his unusually inclusive aesthetic. Pirog had played and bonded with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis before the Messthetics formed, and in 2019, he invited Lewis, whose massive, soulful sound has made him a star of the contemporary jazz scene, to sit in with the group live.
As strong as their 2024 LP ‘The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis’ was, it documented a union still in its infancy: the trio worked up most of the material apart from Lewis and then rehearsed with the saxophonist for just one day before entering the studio. Lally notes, “We literally were not a band that did what bands do at that point that we made the first record.” The quartet’s subsequent extensive touring brought about a very different result on ‘Deface the Currency.’ Lewis says, “The more you know someone, the better the relationship is, the more enriched it becomes. It’s like a cast-iron skillet: The more you keep cooking in it, the better the food gets. So I think that’s what you hear on the record, and you hear an urgency of now.” The band’s heightened communication comes through in many surprising dynamic shifts. On “Universal Security,” Pirog and Lewis’s floating melody, played over a waltz-time pulse from Lally and Canty, segues into the saxophonist improvising against a wall of richly textured guitar noise. “Gestations” layers a bebop-esque line atop a taut funk groove, holding its energy in reserve before revving up to an explosive climax that suggests doom metal meets Sonny Sharrock’s 1991 avant-jazz masterpiece ‘Ask the Ages,’ which the quartet has recently covered in concert. More than any earlier statement by the band, ‘Deface The Currency’ seamlessly melds the sounds that make up its collective DNA, from punk rock to free jazz and funk, balancing compositional precision with palpable improvisational fire.
Tour Dates:
April 17 – Star Theater, Portland, OR
April 18 – Clock-Out Lounge, Seattle, WA
April 19 – Wise Hall, Vancouver, BC
April 25 – Kings, Raleigh, NC
April 26 – Ayurprana Listening Room, Asheville, NC
April 27 – The Earl, Atlanta, GA
April 28 – Singletary Center for the Arts, Lexington, KY
April 30 – Constellation, Chicago, IL
May 1 – Third Man Records, Detroit, MI
May 2 – 918 Bathurst, Toronto, ON
May 3 – Centennial Hall, Erie, PA
May 4 – Tubby’s, Kingston, NY
May 5 – City Winery Boston, Boston, MA
May 6 – Le Poisson Rouge, New York, NY
May 7 – Pittsburgh Jazz & Poetry Festival, Pittsburgh, PA
May 8 – Solar Myth, Philadelphia, PA
May 9 – The Black Cat, Washington, DC