A preferred yarn about Vincent Van Gogh includes the center of Buttercup’s 18-song new album Ship Extra Yellow, which the band will have a good time with a Friday, March 6, album-release present.
That story concerning the Dutch late-impressionist painter additionally provides the discharge’s title.
In a later-life match of obsession, inspiration and melancholy, the famously troubled artist wrote feverish letters to his household, begging them to “ship extra yellow” paint. He was madly wanting to lose himself in ever extra sunflowers and grain fields, or so the story goes.
Within the arms of the beloved San Antonio band, incessantly and aptly described as a life-affirming art-rock undertaking, “ship extra yellow” turns into a sort of embrace of how a lot we’d like one another, how a lot it aches to be so in love with such a flawed world and the way a lot energy artwork provides us to endlessly remake ourselves.
With this album, the band’s tenth since its founding almost 25 years in the past, Buttercup has achieved a troublesome mixture. It’s delivered its most cohesive recorded assertion, each musically and conceptually, and in addition supplied up no less than two or three of its very best songs to this point.
The group’s three core members, Joe Reyes, odie., and ringleader Erik Sanden, have solely gotten higher at inhabiting Buttercup, which can play its launch present on the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre with Heavy Love and Deathray Davies additionally on the invoice.
At a current listening get together for the album, bassist odie., responding to a query concerning the secret to Buttercup’s fruitful collaboration, summed issues up in a sagely method.
“We’re just like the Spurs,” he mentioned, “as a result of no one cares who takes the shot and all of us love one another.”
The album opener, “Angel Mud,” units the tone by establishing pleasure within the face of adversity, not as a protection mechanism however as a core worth.
The refrain on the disco-esque monitor echoes a criticism acquainted to musicians who communicate out on social points, “shut up and sing,” however in context the phrase turns into an empowering exhortation to be your full self as an act of defiance. It’s essentially the most danceable tune in Buttercup’s catalog by far.
The second monitor, “Uncle John,” delves into Ship Extra Yellow’s most typical theme: loss. Written for singer-guitarist Sanden’s late uncle, the tune is a folk-rock rollick with lyrics that dwell on the methods wherein the spirit can linger via demise.
When Sanden sings of a coronary heart that “ain’t full but,” he reminds himself and the listener that loss is rarely an excuse to shrink back from love. As in different moments on this album, pleasure and ache exist collectively simply right here — and in a manner that posits them not as opposing forces however as each part of one thing a lot grander than duality.
One other standout, “Texas Solar, Livid Solar,” saunters alongside, sitting sonically someplace between R&B and a hypnagogic taste of punk, taking intention on the local weather disaster and people who drive it earlier than turning introspective and, as soon as once more, providing a sort of mantra: “We should concentrate on what issues, we should examine what’s in our hearts.”
“Please Ship Assist,” a tragic folk-pop tune Sanden wrote for odie. in a second of profound disaster, returns to the theme of loss. This one carries a extra despondent edge, nevertheless it’s nonetheless twinged with the idea that the love of different people can carry us via.
“I felt so harm for my good friend, however so powerless to actually do something however be there,” Sanden advised the Present of the tune’s inspiration.
For its first ever recoded cowl, Buttercup affords up a gradual and one way or the other sensual tackle the Lifeless Kennedys’ traditional “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” a tune that deepens the album’s preoccupation with the trail to a greater world.
“We don’t normally get political,” Sanden advised the listening get together when discussing the quilt, “nevertheless it simply looks as if the appropriate time for this tune.”
“Consider the billionaires,” guitarist Reyes smirked, shaking his head.
Different album standouts embrace “Coliseum,” a stunning, affected person tune with motorik-nodding percussion that ponders permanence from the angle of prompt gratification, and “What a Mess,” a placing and dramatic tune that lurches and lingers and leers lovingly at life lived massive and free. The which means’s within the mess, it appears to posit.
In some ways, “Zero Management,” the ultimate monitor, is a distillation of the entire effort. Anchored by ambling, samba-flavored percussion and mild guitar, the tune seems to be once more at actual moments of loss from the lifetime of the band.
Right here, Sanden emerges from his encounter with powerlessness and the detached universe with a modified perspective. And, when he repeatedly sings “I’ve zero management,” the fragile magnificence, the imperfect delight in his voice is sufficient to induce tears. It turns into a mantra for liberation, not a criticism.
Sanden mentioned the tune was partially impressed by the expertise of performing on the bedside of late nice San Antonio artist Katie Pell as she ready for her transition past.
“I had the thought that perhaps all of the years of making an attempt to make music had been simply so I may play these songs for Katie,” he mentioned.
$30, 8 p.m. Friday, March 6, Charline McCombs Empire Theatre, 226 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 226-5700, majesticempire.com.
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