News: Light Beams announce new album Wild Life with single/video ‘Coming Our Way’

The Washington D.C. post-dance-punk band Light Beams have just announced their new album titled Wild Life will be released on November 3 via legendary independent label Dischord Records in partnership with the band’s own imprint Mud Memory. Along with the album announcement news, the band have released the lead single ‘Coming Our Way’ across all digital platforms.

The album is the band’s first recorded output since expanding from a trio to a five-piece, with the addition of Leah Gage and Erin McCarley on vocals, percussion, and samples to augment Sam Lavine’s explosive drumming and Arthur Noll’s bass. Thematically, Wild Life is an exercise in processing Light Beams vocalist/bandleader Justin Wm. Moyer’s experience covering protests, demonstrations, and ultimately the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol as a journalist on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team documenting the violent, chaotic, and horrific experiences of that day.

Lead single ‘Coming Our Way’ is as if Gang Of Four had their guitars removed and swapped them for timbales and rototoms. ‘Coming Our Way’ frankly addresses a school shooting that Moyer’s daughter survived. Painted against a backdrop of pandemic America’s years-long chaos and anxiety, Moyer received a phone call from his daughter that someone was firing at students from a makeshift sniper’s nest across the street. He reflects on the ordeal:

“I was in my backyard about to pick up my daughter at school one day when I heard what sounded like machine-gun fire. I didn’t think much of it – D.C. is filled with loud sounds. A few minutes later, my daughter called and said someone was shooting at her school. I tried to explain that the city is filled with sounds and that no one was targeting her school. As later became clear, I was really, really wrong: for reasons that still haven’t been explained, a person set up a “sniper’s nest” at an apartment across from her school and fired, striking a student and a security guard, among others. No one was killed but the sniper, who died by suicide.

“Once I got to the school to pick my daughter up, I entered a sort of fugue state. I didn’t understand the severity of the incident and started sending pictures and “feeds” – little bits of reporting – to my editor. Meanwhile, my daughter was stuck behind a police barricade taking shelter in a CVS. But she seemed safe, so I kept wandering around in a journalistic capacity, trying to figure out what happened so I could help my colleagues write a story about it. After about an hour, I was like: ‘I guess I should, y’know, find my child.’ So I found a way around the police barricade and retrieved my daughter from the CVS to which she had fled.”

Wild Life: