At some point in the past two years, likely right before the release of last winter’s “American Nervousness”, Somerville’s Wolf Blitzer became less about being a band named after the news anchor and more about a collective that combines dance-y synth-pop styles within traditional rock structures. After remaining relatively quiet over the past 13 months, Wolf Blitzer — no need to add “the band” as a disclaimer — are back with a melancholy new track called “DBLVZN”, which stretches out towards the seven-minute mark without getting too jam-band-y.
The new single, recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks at Q Division last year, is out today via a very ’90s-esque CD Maxi-single, complete with three remixes and a radio edit. We’ll probably play the full thing today on VanyaRadio anyway.
“This song started out as the chorus hook, which came to me driving in the car with my girlfriend on the way back from her eye surgery,” says Wolf Blitzer vocalist/bassist Kevin Junker. “So I started shaping the song around that idea, but didn’t want it to be quite so literal. So from there I drew some parallels between that and facing a major choice — being at a crossroads and not wanting to be looking back from the choice you ultimately made and wondering what would have been different. That’s more so the real meaning behind the song.”
From there the track elongated, and just before the three-minute mark hits a nice synth-funk groove.
“Initially the song was just the two-and-a-half-minute pop structure that still exists in the recorded version, but at practice one day we just spontaneously kept going on the chorus vamp and ‘jammed’ on it for another five or six minutes,” Junker adds. “After we finished I sort of looked at the rest of the band and said ‘Yes! That’s the song.’ They were a bit skeptical, and I was too, that we could make an extended outro that could stay interesting without getting too self-indulgent. We worked very carefully to structure it deliberately and not have it turn into a jam band song (and cut back the length), so hopefully that comes across while still capturing the organic live performance. I was definitely looking at some of Tame Impala’s work on extended yet organized instrumental sections as an inspiration.”
Check it out below…
