Typefighter
Washington, Washington DC, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2015 | SELF
Music
Press
Grief and bright, jangling guitar lines aren’t often associated with one another. However, Washington, DC garage pop outfit Typefighter have found a way to cope with bleakness of life while crafting jaunty, upbeat songs. Earlier this year, the band released their debut full length, The End Of Everything, an album which saw frontman Ryan McLaughlin mourning the deaths of two of his good friends. Even with all the venting on their debut, McLaughlin still has more heart-wrenching stories to tell with their new standalone single, “Wall Song”.
“‘Wall Song’ was one of the easiest and hardest songs I’ve ever written,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “It’s about watching a loved one disappear, in a sense, and the coping mechanisms of everyone affected. It’s sad, you know? But eventually, you get to a point where there just isn’t anything you can do anymore and you stop blaming yourself. I guess that can be a beginning or an end, but either way, things really change.”
“Wall Song” strays from the bright tones of their debut record and is more upfront with its misery. The confessional track opens with McLaughlin reminiscing about getting stoned with his 17-year-old brother before escalating to his brother’s current heroin addiction. The guitar line builds from light picking to blaring chords, with McLaughlin practically screaming, “I’m fading away when nothing’s wrong.” It’s a candid and moving look into what it’s like to deal with the guilt of seeing someone else’s life spiral out of control. - Consequence of Sound
Best DC Area Emerging Artists of 2014: FINAL RESULTS: 1. Typefighter, 2. Sleepwalkers, 3. Teen Mom
Deli Nation,
Our Year End Poll for Emerging DC Area Artists was - as usual - a painstaking (and somewhat excruciating) process, but we pulled it off with remarkable flair!
Congratulations to garage-pop wizards Typefighter for winning the poll! Typefighter released The End of Everything in early 2014 to much critical acclaim. Their tight and energetic live shows make them a must see, and obviously one of DC's most exciting bands. We wait with baited breath for their next move. - The Deli Magazine
We mentioned back in October that DC band Typefighter would be releasing their debut album, The End of Everything, this year. We now know that the album comes out next week (4/22) via DC label Huge Witch Records, but you can stream it ahead of its release date now. It follows a few folky EPs, and like lead single "Much," the album has them very much in bigger, more heavily distorted mode.
The stream makes its premiere in this post, and you can listen, with a recent video and their list of dates (none in NYC), below... - Brooklyn Vegan
On DC band Typefighter's earlier material, they were making the kinda folky, kinda emo stuff that bands like Bright Eyes or Death Cab for Cutie started out doing, but on "Much," the first single from their upcoming full length, The End of Everything (due out in 2014), only few traces of their early sound are to be found. Here they're doing the kind of edgy power pop we've gotten from Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, and The Jealous Sound with busy guitar noodling meeting sugary power chords and anthemic "HEEEEEEY"s. (Or maybe he's saying "here," but either way, if you like those bands I mentioned, you should check this out.)
The band just made a video for "Much," and if the song itself isn't nostalgic enough, it features a little kid gathering his friends for a war in the woods against another group of little kids that may remind you of similar playground battles from your own youth. And spoiler alert: there's an underlying love story. The video makes its premiere in this post, and you can watch it below.
Typefighter have a few shows coming up, including one in NYC on November 8 at Grand Victory with Sunset Guns, the Titus Andronicus-related Heeney, and Black Mountain Revival. - Brooklyn Vegan
The Washington DC-based garage pop quartet, Typefighter, has been making a name for themselves in the local scene with two EPs under their belts and a full-length on the way. To help hype their highly anticipated debut album, The End Of Everything, we're excited to premiere the video for the record's infectious single "You When You're Older." Watch the clip above.
"'You When You're Older' is a song I wrote sober in my room while working through a lot of heavy stuff," vocalist Ryan McLaughlin divulges. "I recorded the song with my bandmates while drunk and having a blast. That contrast was fitting because the song is about stubbornly holding onto immaturity. I view silliness/absurdity as a very important window to enjoyment of the moments you should be enjoying as you get older. I had been thinking a lot about getting older and how it was getting more difficult to enjoy those moments. But I kept coming to the conclusion of 'fuck that.' The whole idea around the video is trying to execute a simple idea and just embracing the embarrassment of fucking it all up, as I would have done when I was a little kid. So we locked ourselves in a room for a day with a GoPro and played the song a million times and let things get weird. Thanks to editor Bryan King for making some sort of sense out of it."
The End Of Everything is set for an April 22 release via DC's own Huge Witch Records. Typefighter has some shows coming up to celebrate the album. Check out dates below. - Pue Volume
Discography
I Want To See You Game, Boys, I Want To See You Brave - EP
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Typefighter is a garage-pop band from Washington, DC.
Over the course of two well-received fuzzfolk EPs, Typefighter built a reputation in the nation's capital for disarming melodicism. With their debut full-length The End of Everything, the band has rewired its unique instrumentation into an arresting rock and roll record filled with pounding rhythms and roaring guitars. It's a big, snappy sound that lives up to the raucous live sets the band has delivered on stage with bands like Here We Go Magic, The So So Glos, Givers and We Were Promised Jetpacks. The End of Everything picks up where the sound of DC in the 1990s left off and ventures into uncharted pop territory.
The louder, wilder Typefighter was born of time in the wilderness. The band decamped from its H Street practice space to Vermont to record with veteran producer John Thayer (Exit Clov, Drunken Sufis) in a remote cabin, where they stripped away their customary autoharps and banjos to seek the raw core of their songcraft.
During the sessions, singer/guitarist Ryan McLaughlin was reeling from the loss of two close friends in quick succession: one a former bandmate, the other a co-founder of the pie truck run by McLaughlin during Washington's white-collar lunch hours. The solitude of Vermont helped McLaughlin immerse himself in The End of Everything's turbulent emotional waters.
"I was just shot," McLaughlin said. "Losing two people so close to me in such a short period of time got me thinking about how our lives are just a little piece of a much bigger puzzle. Once you're gone, you're gone, but the world keeps spinning. Music helped me find my place in that puzzle."
For all its snazzy melodies and thundering drumming, The End of Everything isn't a record about teenage dreams and rock and roll excess. It's a record built from the hard realities of adulthood, accentuated by a sonic adventurousness cultivated by guitarist Thomas Orgren as an engineer at DC's legendary Inner Ear Studios and driven along by the forceful rhythm section of drummer Will Waikart and bassist John Scoops. Typefighter has forged an album that makes melodic sense out of emotional chaos. On the first single "Much," the band delivers a fist-pumping anthem over shifting time signatures and raw guitars, rising above McLaughlin's turmoil. Redemption has never sounded so good.
Band Members
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