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Stripped of any pretense of rock n’ roll escapism, Advertisement masterfully reimagine what guitar dominated music can accomplish. After the release of their lauded debut LP, American Advertisement, the PNW rock band have regrouped in LA with producer Gabe Wax (War on Drugs, Soccer Mommy) to bring listeners a short collection of new songs and remixes that have vital, immediate energy.
Its opening track “Here It Comes,” describes the anxious joy of hurtling towards some unknown future. Its title might be read as a coy hint from the band – this EP is the beginning of a much larger stylistic leap, one which has yet to make itself known. On “Here It Comes,” Advertisement cleverly reimagine their earlier song “Freedom,” transforming the sprawling krautrock ode into a polished pop freak out, channeling early Roxy Music and Typical System-era Total Control in equal parts. Today it comes with an accompanying video, directed by Philip Steiger (Sheer Mag, Girlpool, Jack White) and shot by Travis Waddell (Death Bells, Louis Vuitton, Lady Gaga), featuring Advertisement’s ominous giddy energy as they galavant from the streets of Los Angeles to a gyrocopter on the beaches of Mexico.
WATCH “HERE IT COMES (FREEDOM)” ON YOUTUBE
By reworking “Freedom” into “Here It Comes,” Advertisement have loosened things up for interpretation, taking a sprawling track and transforming it into a 3-minute pop song, to say that it might as well have been this the whole time. In another place on the EP, it’s a 7-minute club track. Guitarist Ryan Mangione Smith says, “we wanted to keep the band in a state of flux, knocking any definition of what it is, or should be, down a peg.”
On “Ladder of Love,” a brand-new track, Advertisement bring the chaotic ramble down to a nervous simmer. Vocalist Charlie Hoffman sardonically croons about a failing relationship, replete with images of St. Peter, crucifixions, and misbehaving minds. Underneath Hoffman’s lyrics, the band wobbles around like someone without their sea-legs, caught on an Atlantic steamship somewhere between Lou Reed’s New York and Scott Walker’s London.
The EP is rounded out by two remixes of “Here It Comes”: Dan Horne’s approach pushes the track towards even glossier, bombastic highs, while Big Step’s closing rendition drags it down to the seedy depths of underground house nightclubs. On the Freedom EP, Advertisement intentionally pushes at the boundaries of what a rock band could or should be in 2021. While they don’t distance themselves from the title of “rock band” itself, they ask what else it might be capable of, injecting the genre with a sense of wide-eyed imagination and witty difficulty.
