If it’s possible to feel nostalgic for something that happened a mere two months ago, D.C. pop rock band Bad Moves managed to capture longing in a bottle with the music video for “Party With the Kids Who Wanna Party With You,” the first single off their new album Untenable (via Don Giovanni Records).
Filmed at guitarist Katie Park’s house, the video captures one of the many things rendered obsolete by the COVID-19 pandemic: the D.C. house party (although Bad Moves’ version has actual children populating the party). The band’s timing for the shoot couldn’t have been better.
“We shot that video, like, right before people began social distancing,” says vocalist/guitarist David Combs. “Like, days before.”
Timing has always been on the side of the quartet. Formed in 2015, Bad Moves came together after Park, bassist Emma Cleveland and drummer Daoud Tyler-Ameen arrived in D.C., each pursuing various nonmusical career opportunities. For Tyler-Ameen, connecting with Combs — who hails from Takoma Park, Md. — happened almost as soon as he had finished unpacking.
“We were booked to perform [as solo artists] at the same house show I think, like, six weeks after I moved to town,” explains Tyler-Ameen.
Combs and Cleveland had already performed together in a Zombies cover band while Park met Combs when she was a member of the band Hemlines. But it was their love of karaoke that turned out to be their greatest unifier — the group all attended a regular karaoke night at the now-defunct The Pinch on 14th Street.
“It is a way that, I think, socially and musically we did size each other up over a period of years,” Tyler-Ameen says.
Realizing that combining their musical tastes and talents might prove effective, Bad Moves was born, releasing a self-titled EP in 2017 followed by their debut album Tell No One in 2018.
Bad Moves’ new material on Untenable (out now digitally with a CD and vinyl release date of July 3) seems almost prophetic, with themes that tap into the events of the last few months.
The music video — filmed during quarantine — for their second single, the aptly named “End of Time,” is a fun-filled jam that has the band questioning “Maybe this all ends up fine/Or maybe it’s the end of time.”
“Night Terrors,” a driving power pop song reminiscent of early material by The Knack and The Romantics, opens with the lyrics “Sometimes I think all I have to do is keep us alive/Whatever happens just to make it to the morning light.” Given that all of the songs were written and recorded well before the pandemic, they take on an air of gravitas given our present situation.
“I think in reflecting on the album, given the current circumstances, it’s felt pretty clear to us that there are some themes in there that still really resonate with us right now and really apply to what’s going on,” says Park. “I think we all tend to share a worldview in which we can be somewhat pessimistic some of the time. Where we see crises happening in terms of systems in power and those things have been happening far longer than the pandemic has been going on. So it’s almost like, well, if we’re always in this cycle of crisis then it only makes sense that it’s coming up now.”
Given that the music and concert industries came to a screeching halt with the shutdown, numerous artists and bands are delaying their new releases indefinitely. Bad Moves, however, decided to plow ahead, realizing that this collection of songs captures the current times.
“A lot of [the songs] have been borne out of a political anxiety that has existed for a long time and been really amplified in the last few years,” says Combs. “We were eager to release these songs sooner than later. When [the pandemic] came up, we were still of the mind that these songs feel pertinent to this moment and maybe even more so now in a way that we couldn’t have anticipated.”
Untenable is now streaming and available for purchase via Bandcamp.
