POPULAR CREEPS to Release ‘All Of This Will End In Tears’ on Big Stir Records December 9
Big Stir Records is thrilled to close out 2022 with the highly-anticipated release of the new album from POPULAR CREEPS: ALL OF THIS WILL END IN TEARS. The record sees release on CD (in record stores worldwide) and streaming everywhere on December 9, and is up for pre-order at www.bigstirrecords.com and major online music retailers now. It’s the band’s full-length debut for Big Stir, following the success of the hit 2021 double A-side single “Black & Blue” and “Split Decision” (both included here) and the new “Gone By 45”, released to strong airplay across the global pop-rock radio scene this past October.
If you’ve somehow missed the noise kicked up by POPULAR CREEPS on the global pop scene over the past few years, a few simple facts about the band say a lot. The Creeps are a four-piece two-guitar band from Detroit who named themselves after a solo single by former Replacements drummer Chris Mars. Critics writing about their 2019 debut Bloodshot Red and their blistering live sets have cited them as torchbearers of the mid-to-late ’80s college rock sound and invoked some mighty Rs — The Replacements, R.E.M. and The Rolling Stones – to triangulate their sound. The band themselves offer: “If The ‘Mats, Buffalo Tom and Television got into a bar fight, it might sound like us… maybe?” Generationally sandwiched between two iconic Detroit rock scenes — the Grandpa Grunge era of The Stooges and The MC5, and the Gold Dollar garage revival — Popular Creeps flex their Michigan muscle in a more melodic direction… maybe Heartland Punk? Or Northern Jangle? Or maybe just plain Midwestern?
You’ll hear every bit of that on this record. POPULAR CREEPS — Lenny Grassa (guitar, vocals), Andrew Colvin (guitar, vocals), Joe Heaphy (bass) and Dave Nantais (drums) – deliver tune after tune filled with hummable hooks and hard-bitten, heartfelt lyrics over a bedrock built of equal parts postpunk jangle and Hüsker Dü-style crunch. The story of ALL OF THIS WILL END IN TEARS, like the story of rock and roll itself, starts with singles. Highly recommended by THE FORTY NINETEENS (two of whom were ’90s bandmates with Grassa in beloved Detroit-via-LA garage rock combo THE LEONARDS), the Creeps landed two tracks on the Big Stir Records Singles Series at its height in 2021. The punchy, instantly memorable “Black & Blue” and the ringing midtempo stunner “Split Decision” both scored big on international pop-rock radio and struck a chord with the label founders, Detroit-born Christina and unrepentant college rocker Rex.
Popular Creeps thus became one of the very few artists out of nearly a hundred to make the leap from the Singles Series to the permanent Big Stir Records roster, with the next single heralding the announcement of the forthcoming album. “Gone By 45”, released this October, is a driving rocker with a killer chorus and the emotional heft of paying tribute to Grassa‘s friend (and Leonards bassist), the late Tom Payne. All the singles are here on TEARS, including the next standalone cut to be released alongside the record: “Wait And See”, a world-weary but anthemic stomper that ties the influences of the Hüskers and R.E.M. together with natural ease.
The Creeps simply excel in this idiom: there’s the sly and chiming ode to codependency “Window”, “From The Past” which comes on like a jangled-up Cheap Trick, and the punk-velocity earworm “Tear Me Apart”. But there’s also room for detours into alt-country — both revved up in Stonesy style (“Keep It To Myself”) and stripped-down enough to incorporate hushed vocals and banjo (“Wait Forever”) — and the grunge-via-Buzzcocks charger “Flamethrower”. And the record closes with the lovely acoustic textures of “Favorite Picture”… a song which lends ALL OF THIS WILL END IN TEARS its seemingly fatalistic title, but closes it on a note of hope and comfort.
It’s a remarkable showing for this band of Michigan rock veterans, who formed in 2017 when Lenny answered a Craigslist ad looking for a guitarist/singer influenced by The Replacements & Guided by Voices. Heaphy (formerly of NYC’s Slingshot) had placed the ad after he and his neighborhood soulmate/drinking buddy Andrew Colvin (Last Bastards, The Happy Accident) had decided that their incessant basement tinkering might deserve to see a little sunlight. Dave Nantais of local Celtic band Odd Enough had been an acquaintance of Heaphy‘s and after an exhaustive “interview” at Woodbridge Tavern he was duly appointed drummer. The early rush of gigs and the momentum of the debut album and BSR single could have run aground at the start of the pandemic, but as Grassa says, “Like everybody else, Popular Creeps found a way to move forward – sharing demos via email and text, slowly coming back together to rehearse in masks and hazmat suits, six feet apart, windows down, hand sanitizer by the gallon. Before long there were new songs and work to be done.”
That’s where the waning months of 2022 find POPULAR CREEPS, not having missed a beat as the world reawakens. Backyard and front-porch gigs give way to full electric shows as the bars slowly re-open their doors. The band is filling their calendars with dates to support ALL OF THIS WILL END IN TEARS, their live energy undimmed and their material stronger than ever. Early critical and radio response confirms that they’ve delivered a late but extremely potent contender for the Year’s Best Albums lists just around the corner, and as for 2022 itself, for POPULAR CREEPS, it’s a safe bet that it will end in cheers.
