Retail Drugs, the tape-recording project helmed by NYC musician Jake Brooks, have announced their new album, rECKless dRIVing, which arrives Aug. 1 via Fire Talk Records imprint Angel Tapes.
The record largely compiles B-sides and demos from their reissued 2024 debut LP, i love you so !, into another off-kilter collection, telling stories of early adulthood through torrents of analog fuzz. That’s felt on previous singles “person A” and “euphoria,” as well as their latest. “manny” is a noisy track born from an acoustic guitar and a late-night toke while working on music for Laveda, the band Brooks started with guitarist Ali Genevich in 2017 (and whose tour inspired him to write ilys!).
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Of the song, Brooks says, “I don’t smoke weed much. ‘manny’ began as a shared spliff between me and longtime collaborator Dylan Sky. Ali and I were over at Dylan’s in Eagle Rock working on what would become the first demos of Laveda’s upcoming record, Love, Darla. Ali went to sleep while Dylan and I continued working on stuff. Eventually, we smoked a spliff to stay awake longer, and ‘manny’ was the first thing we did after that. I think the spliff wrote the song mostly. I was doing a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do on a track. I bounced a bunch of stuff from that session to tape after Ali and I moved to NYC. This song was almost a last-minute add to ilys, but it just couldn’t fit the tracklist.”
Listen to Retail Drugs’ “manny” below.
Retail Drugs – rECKless dRIVing tracklist
- “little dog”
- “waiting room”
- “just the thing”
- “still..”
- “manny”
- “rECK”
- “person A”
- “i wanna be cool”
- “i just want to bring you down”
- “he hears us”
- “euphoria”