The Lawrence Arms announce first album in 6 years, ‘Skeleton Coast,’ share “PTA”

Karma Oak

We knew for a while now that The Lawrence Arms were working on their first album since 2014's great comeback LP Metropole, and now the new album has officially been announced. It's called Skeleton Coast and it comes out on July 17 via Epitaph. The first single is "PTA," which is the kind of gritty, melodic, fast-paced ripper that The Lawrence Arms have excelled at for years. It sounds like classic Lawrence Arms, but it sounds fresh too. Listen and watch the video (which is full of dancing skeletons) below. Artwork and tracklist below too.

The band made the album at Sonic Ranch Studio in El Paso, TX with longtime producer Matt Allison, and vocalist/guitarist Chris McCaughan says, "It was kind of like album camp in the sense that we were in this very remote setting for two weeks and really focusing on making the record. That was a very different experience for us because we’ve always made our records in Chicago which is home and all the things about home are in the way."

Vocalist/bassist Brendan Kelly adds, "For a band who has been around as long as us, this is about as urgent of a record as we could make. It may be kind of dark but it’s really about searching for light in the darkness and finding it, as small as those moments may seem. That’s sort of where we’re at: Collecting the scraps of things that could make for a bearable existence in dark times."

For more Brendan Kelly, we recently wrote about his old ska band Slapstick (whose lineup also included Alkaline Trio's Dan Andriano) in our list of 12 classic ska-punk albums to prepare you for the impending ska-punk revival.

Tracklist
1. Quiet Storm
2. PTA
3. Belly Of The Whale
4. Dead Man's Coat
5. Pigeons and Spies
6. Last Last Words
7. Demon
8. Ghostwriter
9. How To Rot
10. Under Paris
11. Goblin Fox Hunt
12. Lose Control
13. Don't Look At Me
14. Coyote Crown