It would probably annoy the Hard Quartet — which features Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, Chavez/Superwolves’ Matt Sweeney, the Dirty Three’s Jim White and Bonnie Prince Billy/ Ty Segall alum Emmett Kelly — very much to be called and indie supergroup, but as the words above show, the shoe fits.
The group has announced its eponymous debut album will be arriving Oct. 4 on Matador Records, and did so in supreme fashion with a video for “Rio’s Song” that almost perfectly mimics the Rolling Stones’ iconic 1981 clip for “Waiting on a Friend,” down to the same building and bar on St. Marks Place in New York City’s East Village. The clip was directed by Jared Sherbert.
“The ‘Rio’s Song’ video is the Hard Quartet’s homage to street rock in the hot afternoon & clowning around with lifer friends in downtown New York City,” the group said in a collective statement. “Director Jared Sherbert shot it guerrilla style on St Mark’s Place and in the International Bar on July 15 2024. It features local NYC artists, musicians, activists, skaters and icons who are dear to the band.”
The “leaderless” group’s origin was detailed in a recent profile in GQ. “Soon, the whole group is reflecting and laughing and offering a window into the free-wheeling process that informs their proudly leaderless new collaboration: an idea first proposed by Sweeney over the phone to Malkmus during the early days of the pandemic. After collaborating in various permutations and running into each other frequently on the road, the idea of making music together—by nobody’s rules but their own, distinct from any industry trends or standards—felt like a no-brainer. Sweeney looks back in awe at the Hard Quartet’s first week of working together, during which they quickly amassed nearly an album’s worth of songs and settled into an identity that felt distinct from any of their previous projects. (“This is not a project—it’s a band,” Malkmus says firmly. Sweeney responds with a triumphant, guttural, “Yeeeah!”)”
The band, which plans to tour extensively next year, will play its first shows in October:
Oct 10 – Los Angeles @ The Belasco
Oct 17 – New York @ Webster Hall
Oct 22 – London @ Electric Ballroom
TRACKLIST
1. Chrome Mess
2. Earth Hater
3. Rio’s Song
4. Our Hometown Boy
5. Renegade
6. Heel Highway
7. Killed By Death
8. Hey
9. It Suits You
10. Six Deaf Rats
11. Action For Military Boys
12. Jacked Existence
13. North of the Border
14. Thug Dynasty
15. Gripping the Riptide
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