“After a show, someone approached us and said our set sounded like ‘lost songs from an unidentifiable 80s college rock band’. We’d heard this before. The New Yorker had made a similar ‘80s college rock’ reference when trying to categorize Wormburner. Yes, our music might sound vaguely familiar, but no one has ever quite put their finger on it. I like to think we are students of our record collections, and we welcome it when listeners search out our influences when hearing our songs,” explained Hank Henry, lyricist and lead vocalist.
Wormburner’s new album has been released today, June 6th,. Based in Brooklyn, this is a band whose prior LP was praised with a very high grade by such legendary critics as Robert Christgau. Tour dates have landed Wormburner as far from home as the Pacific Northwest, where KEXP in Seattle has twice honored Wormburner with” Song of the Day” accolades and has hosted the band in KEXP’s live-in-the-studio performance space.
Titled Last of the Winter Light, the new album finds Wormburner at the peak of their powers to-date. With narrative lyrics as vivid as you’ve come to expect from the Wormburner canon, these newest songs are populated by fringe figures, frozen and stranded, but somehow persevering in stark settings where the way forward is marked only by winter’s diminishing daylight.
Wormburner has shared stages with The War on Drugs, Violent Femmes, The Hold Steady, The Walkmen, Old 97s, Dean Wareham, Deer Tick, Pansy Division, Tommy Keene, Bill Janovitz of Buffalo Tom, Cracker, and Camper van Beethoven (David Lowery produced Wormburner’s debut album). Legendary VJ Matt Pinfield once hosted Wormburner vocalist Hank Henry for an in-depth interview on MTV’s 120 Minutes. But the band remains an outlier. And despite limited commercial response to their work, Wormburner continues to release time-tested material that is filled with personality and heart.
Mixes for the new album were handled by Phil Palazzolo (Okkervil River, New Pornographers, Neko Case, Ted Leo + Pharmacists). Wormburner recently expanded to a six-piece lineup, propelling their already-electrifying stage show to a decidedly higher level of execution.
On Thursday June 12th at New York City’s Mercury Lounge, Wormburner will celebrate their album release by sharing the stage with the acclaimed Cincinnati band Wussy.
