BRUNCH Releases Double A-Side Singles PLEASE KILL ME and MAN ALIVE
Guitarist Philip Bern, bassist Mason Kosman, drummer Ayden Flanigan and guitarist Cameron Mincar make up the Burlington outfit.
The Burlington, VT-based rock band BRUNCH released two new tracks, PLEASE KILL ME and MAN ALIVE, as a double A-side single. The band, made up of Philip Bern on guitar, Mason Kosman on bass, Ayden Flanigan on drums, and Cameron Mincar on guitar, is set to perform the songs live at a release show at Purgatory in Brooklyn, New York. The new material follows the group's 2024 EP DOGINYA and last year's live release, Live At Robot Dog.
Bouncing back from their 2024 EP DOGINYA, as well as last year's follow-up Live At Robot Dog, the members have incorporated some of the ideas from their previous releases, including influences from existential and political philosophy, lyricism directly referencing and engaging with literature and music history, instrumentation that evokes decades worth of rock music without belonging to any one genre or tradition, and vocal harmonies and musical interplay that express each member's individual personalities.
The songs are described as two sides of the same coin, both exploring myths and what happens when they collapse, whether it be rock and roll, identity, memory, and love. 'Please Kill Me', named after the iconic oral history of classic punk, braids the memory of Phil Spector's 'Wall Of Sound' recordings for psych pop-era Beatles, with instrument and synthesizers of every era, Marxist philosophy that curdles the lyrics into souring, biting commentary on nostalgia and the stagnation of cultural memory.
'The song sounds almost like it could belong to any decade without exactly belonging to any of them,' say the band.
'Please Kill Me' comes with a DIY, grainy new music video shot like a home video documenting the band's day at the Devil's Bowl Speedway, complete with a guerrilla-shot, full, electric rock performance at New England's Fastest Dirt Race Track. The band recalls: 'Halfway through the race there was a huge four car pileup that took a construction crew 30 minutes to remove from the track while everyone watched. You can see in the video our reactions to the crash and the clean-up — the cars were totaled but thankfully none of the drivers were hurt. After the race the owners let us out onto the tracks in our van and we set up right in the middle and played along to the song. Before we left, we all piled into the back of the van and played our instruments while our friend drove us around the track. It was a bumpy ride, but the excitement of that night comes across in the video and matches the energy of 'Please Kill Me' perfectly.'
The second single 'Man Alive' finds the band getting lost in new territory, coating a shimmering, synthwave gloss over a dark, romantic rock track. It may be Brunch's most vulnerable and personal song yet, invoking the poetry of Jorge Borges, the films and music of David Lynch, and the writings of James Joyce and Hakuri Murakami to portray the spiral into the cavernous depths of depression before escaping out the other side through the transcendent power of love.
'It's about struggling with the difficulties of being a human while holding onto radical hopefulness and love for others, a topic deeply influenced by existential philosophy,' adds the band. 'It's a song about radical antagonisms; light and darkness, dreams and reality, each defining itself by its own opposite.'
Brunch the Band emerged out of the music scene in Burlington, VT and are gunning to become Gen Z's first capital-R Rock Band. Formed during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic by four best friends and lifelong music obsessives, their songs capture the strange reality of coming of age right as the entire world seems to be falling apart. Having met while studying Philosophy at the University of Vermont, Brunch's music wrestles with themes of alienation, cultural memory, existentialism, and the mythology of rock itself, without ever losing their punk edge and deep emotional core.
Their debut album, 2023's Parasocial, produced by Urian Hackney (Iggy Pop, Interpol, the Armed), was called 'one of the strongest, strangest rock albums of the year' (Seven Days) and presented 8 songs coming out sounding something like a mix of Gang of Four style post-punk, Rolling Stones style rock and roll, and even shades of Green Day style pop-punk. Their follow up, 2024's DOGINYA EP, demonstrated a refined sound without losing any energy or originality, going 'full chameleon between tracks, mixing up sounds and genres' while maintaining their distinct musical and visual identity. (Is This Thing On?) The following 2025 live EP, Live at Robot Dog, showed the band once again evolving, debuting four all-new songs pulling from a new post-hardcore and alternative rock direction.
Brunch have dates lined up throughout the summer, including the release show at Purgatory in Brooklyn, NY on August 13. They are already deep into planning their next album.
A vintage, home movie-style music video accompanying PLEASE KILL ME was also released alongside the singles, continuing the band's incorporation of influences ranging from existential and political philosophy to literary and musical history.
Photo Credit: Mary Kate McGuirk | Download hi-res image
Photo Credit: Mary Kate McGuirk | Download hi-res image
