Smallpools Announces Anthemic Genre-Blending Alt Pop Album ‘Ghost Town Road’ Out Sept 20th
June 28, 2024 BY Emma Orland
Alt-pop trio Smallpools are thrilled to announce their new album Ghost Town Road out September 20th with Nettwerk. The bold new project is an elegy for a bygone era about appreciating the allure of nostalgia while trying not to get stuck in the past. To celebrate the announcement, the band is dropping their new single “Be Kind, Rewind,” an ode to Blockbuster. Listen HERE.
Written and recorded at guitarist Michael Kamerman’s house in Los Angeles, with collaborations from colin creeV of Third Eye Blind and Mitchy Collins of lovelytheband, Ghost Town Road is rife with everything that fans have come to expect from Smallpools – arena-ready hooks, impeccable production, music that crosses genre barriers without ever losing its definition.
As a project that splits time between Los Angeles and Nashville, Kamerman, frontman Sean Scanlon, and drummer Beau Kuther reflected on the evolution of each city in the decade since their debut hit single “Dreaming.” “When the band first started, the goal was to play the free Monday nights at the Satellite, that’s all we wanted to do,” Kuther recalls. Once proving ground for ambitious local indie bands, the legendary Silver Lake venue closed permanently during the pandemic. Four years later, the space still lies vacant. Meanwhile, they’ve seen Nashville equally overrun by Brooklyn transplants, reality TV producers and bachelorette parties.
These are the images that inform Ghost Town Road and the forthcoming full-length, named after a street sign that Kamerman saw passing through a stretch of the Nevada desert. “There’s not that many of the bands that we started with that are still doing it, so it feels a little bit like a ghost town out here now, especially post-pandemic,” he reflects. Yet, Ghost Town Road is as much a state of mind as it is a physical place, as Smallpools re-acquainted themselves with the Hollywood dive bars and restaurants that served as their communal, creative spaces in the early days. “Drive down Wilshire at night, it feels kind of like a ghost town as well,” Scanlon jokes.
The album features music previously released off their EP Ghost Town Road (east) and the most recent single “Be, Kind Rewind.” Sean adds, “In ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ we ask ourselves if we could go back to certain moments would we say things differently and be kinder to one another and not let some situations get the best of us.”
About Smallpools
Smallpools called their shot with “Dreaming” – since their 2013 debut single, the trio’s experience has been nothing short of surreal. They’ve played festivals from Lollapalooza to Summerfest, earned RIAA gold and platinum plaques, held their own in arenas and late night TV and, along with their peers and collaborators like Grouplove, Walk the Moon, Twenty One Pilots, developed the sound that developed the alt pop scene.
After 2021’s self-released Life in a Simulation felt like the only logical reaction the early COVID era, it’s only natural that Smallpools are searching for what’s truly authentic on Ghost Town Road. Ghost Town Road announces a bold new era for Smallpools, while also a spiritual heir to the 2013 EP that started it all. “I feel like that was a definitive body of work, we were dialed in,” Scanlon muses. “With this project, we’re dialed back in.” Kamerman views it less like a sequel and more like a franchise reboot – “The other music exists and you’re free to revisit it,” he states. “But we’re back and we mean it.”
