Bad Stuff share “Invisible Man”, the second single from their forthcoming self-titled debut album, Bad Stuff, arriving June 5 via Relapse Records. Featuring members of True Widow (Dan Phillips and Nicole Estill) with Dallas art rock luminaries Jackie Dunn Smith, Gabriel Spatz, and Laura Hartman Pearl, the band channels hypnotic post-punk, blown out garage rock, and slow-burning heaviness.
“The song that would later become ‘Invisible Man’ was one of the first songs I wrote specifically for Bad Stuff,” explains Phillips. “I made a drum machine demo on my ADAT machine and sent it to Gabe with a gibberish vocal track so he could hear the melody and phrasing I had in mind, but when I got it back, he had sung over a part I had not intended to have vocals on. I started to tell him ‘eyo, don’t sing on this part,’ but immediately changed my mind because it was actually way cool. Now I can’t imagine the song without that part. One-take Gabe needs no editing.”
Spatz adds: “Yeah, I’m glad that part stayed in the song. Some of my favorite lines are in there; lines that kind of expand the meaning of the song for me. I remember singing it into my phone in the bathroom and on the roof of my building and having to retake it over and over again because I kept getting interrupted by the sound of horns and barking dogs.”
Bad Stuff first introduced themselves with the debut single “Summer Girls,” a simmering track anchored by hypnotic circular rhythms, low end drone, and Phillips’ unmistakable guitar work.
The band began as two separate projects: Latent Print, an instrumental outfit featuring Phillips and Estill, and Concord Kill, Dunn Smith’s synth and drum machine driven project. “So these songs from our two bands are sitting there, one set that I wrote for Latent Print and another set that Jackie wrote on a four-track recorder, and one day we decided that maybe we’d try to put it all together and see if it worked,” recalls Phillips. “And it did. When we were doing the sequence for the record, that “switching the dial“ thing became apparent– there’s not just one sound or one style. It really makes the pacing of the record work and sort of showcases each of the songs.”
Bad Stuff is Dan Phillips (Guitar), Jackie Dunn Smith (Vocals, Synth), Nicole Estill (Vocals, Drums), Gabriel Spatz (Vocals, Maracas) and Laura Hartman Pearl (Bass). The seeds for Bad Stuff were planted when a friend asked Phillips to start a residency at a Dallas-based lounge, thereby creating an instrumental band with a true crime bent called Latent Print. Those songs, built for a two-piece, would showcase his considerable rockabilly chops with Nicole Estill (also of True Widow) sliding into the drum throne for the first time. Latent Print created several bespoke compositions for the residency as the band was slated to play on a weekly basis, but the COVID lockdown permanently ended those gigs. Fast forward a bit to the lockdown days and Phillips’s partner Dunn Smith revealed her work as Concord Kill– synth and drum machine driven tracks built on a four track. Once Phillips added guitar and the two began reshaping material from both projects, Bad Stuff was born.
