Iron Chic - You Cant Stay Here (2017)

On records like 2010’s Not Like This and 2013’s The Constant One, Long Island punk band Iron Chic came on like your best college bud on a Saturday night loud, boisterous, and down to crush every beer can in sight. But on the forthcoming You Can’t Stay Here, due 10/13, the brawny combo is mired in the depths of an emotional crisis brought on by the death of former member Rob McAllister, who passed away suddenly in 2016 at the age of 36.

While the music on You Can’t Stay Here all shout-along choruses and 10-ton power chords is the catchiest and most accessible of Iron Chic’s career, the lyrics are unrelentingly dark, even grim, reflecting not just on McAllister’s death but also the end of a long-term relationship for singer Jason Lubrano. “I got an ocean of grief / just pouring down on me / it comes without warning,” he sings in “A Headache With Pictures,” which premieres today on Uproxx. These sentiments are indicative of the entire album, which plays out like an extended, deeply troubled riff on mortality and the meaning of loss.

Formed in 2008 and composed of members hovering in the vicinity of 40, Iron Chic belongs in the same class as similarly “mature” punk acts like Jeff Rosenstock, Pup, and The Menzingers, all of whom have recently put out albums that set meditations about aging and adult responsibility to uplifting rock music. The difference with Iron Chic is the relative lack of hope on You Can’t Stay Here it sounds like the band members are still trying to reconcile fraught emotions as they’re playing the songs.

“I usually write pretty depressing lyrics, but I was like, ‘None of these songs really have that little uptick at the end,’ or whatever,” Lubrano admits. “I just kind of ran with it at that point. I was like, ‘I guess this is what we needed.'”

TRACKLIST

01. A Headache With Pictures
02. My Best Friend (Is A Nihilist)
03. You Can't Stay Safe
04. Let's. Get. Dangerous.
05. Thunderbolts!
06. Planes, Chest Pains, and Automobiles
07. Golgotha
08. Profane Geometry
09. Invisible Ink
10. Ruinous Calamity
11. To Shreds, You Say?