Editor’s Note: Welcome to Quarantainment, Vanyaland’s new series on what to watch, what to hear, and how to deal as the world engages in social distancing to combat the spread of coronavirus, or COVID-19. We’re all at home, we’re all online, and we’re all in this together. #StayTheFHome
Maybe it’s just the fucked up times we’re living in, or maybe it’s just our own hypochondriatic insanity taking hold in the age of pandemic, but when Gateway Drugs deadpan the line “I wanna die / From medication” — as they do on their new single, “Wait (Medication)”, out today (March 27) — it sure strikes a nerve. The Los Angeles band, three-fifths composed of progeny of The Knack’s Prescott Niles, have set a fairly remarkable tone for their forthcoming May album PSA with this sinister new guitar-rock fuzz-heaver, produced by Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes.
And it certainly falls in sonic line with the best of BMRC and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. True to form, Gateway Drugs say “Wait (Medication)” is all about “falling in love with madness. When sustenance is stolen and your vice becomes your friend, your lover. Romanticization of loneliness and despair. The delight of debauchery and the consequences of excess.”
Sounds like 2020 in a drug-fueled nutshell.
May can’t come soon enough.