Coin

When: 31st August 2023
Location: GWG3 Galvanizers

Coin are the Tennessee indie-pop trio headline O2 Forum Kentish Town this August. Coming to Glasgow’s SWG3 Galvanizers on 31st August 2023.

The fourth full-length from COIN, Uncanny Valley, is an album born from intense fascination with what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. In the spirit of an emotion-driven sci-fi film, the Nashville-based trio use that fascination as a lens to explore a constellation of human concerns (disconnection, infatuation, existential crisis), instilling each song with equal parts raw honesty & cold
calculation. The result is a body of work both high-concept and wildly free-spirited, ultimately making for COIN’s most immersive output to date.

Although its songs bear the immediately catchy appeal of past hits like ‘Talk Too Much’—a Gold-certified 2016 track that cracked the top 10 on Billboard’s US Alternative Songs chart—Uncanny Valley fully embodies a forward-thinking and kaleidoscopic sonic palette. “The idea was to take the elements of classic rock—the organic instrumentation and energy of drums and guitar and bass—then put all that through a very hi-fi and modern filter,” says COIN vocalist/keyboardist Chase Lawrence, whose bandmates include guitarist Joe Memmel and drummer Ryan Winnen.

“We wanted to make people feel like they’ve opened a door to the future, and heard a combination of sounds they weren’t supposed to hear yet.” Continuing with the carefree experimentation that fuelled their 2021 project Rainbow Mixtape, COIN summoned those sounds in part by mining everything from ’90s hip-hop to ’70s art-rock, all while showcasing the sophisticated musicianship they’ve honed since their formation in 2012.

Co-produced by COIN and Julian Bunetta (a producer/songwriter known for his work with artists like One Direction and Maroon 5), Uncanny Valley first took shape with the spontaneous yet staggered writing of its euphoric lead single “Chapstick”: a fantastically warped track built on a dizzying collision of sonic details (greasy guitar riffs, mechanical grooves, chameleonic vocal work). “One of the first days I met with Julian, he started playing these very Southern, Rolling Stones-style riffs that were way out of my comfort zone, and I started pairing that with drums that he never would’ve chosen—there was this weird push-and-pull where neither of us really knew what was happening,” Lawrence recalls.

“At first it felt so wrong and so bizarre, but after a while I went back to the demo and freestyled that line ‘I just wanna taste your chapstick,’ and then suddenly it all snapped into place. It took that song to completely disrupt our process, and to remember what it’s like to make whatever we feel like making.” Informed by such AI-centric films as Ex Machina and AlphaGo, Uncanny Valley also brings that pure creative abandon to tracks like “Brad Pitt”—a deceptively breezy piece of ear candy embedded with questions of eternal life and perpetual youth. “‘Brad Pitt’ was definitely one of the songs that felt uncomfortable at first,” says Memmel, noting that the track features accordion alongside its West Coast hip-hop beat. “But then we just kept massaging and trying different things, and eventually what seemed
risky turned into something that felt so right.” Made with Grammy Award-winning producer Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, twenty øne piløts, Eminem), “Tangerine” unfolds as a beautifully woozy meditation on love and loss. “That song’s based on the idea of memory manifesting as taste,” says Lawrence. “No matter how hard you try to metaphorically brush your teeth, there’s this person who’s still cemented there—you can’t ever scrub them out.” And on “Killing Me,” COIN deliver a sublime and shapeshifting epic that began its life as a bit of an in-band joke. “I basically started that song as a pop song with a lot of exciting tension to it, and then sent the demo to Chase with the title ‘Fake Pop Song,’”
says Winnen. “I think you win every time when you embrace that sort of levity, instead of just soullessly
doing the math of songwriting.”

For all three members of COIN, that sense of levity was essential in dreaming up such an adventurous
and unpredictable batch of songs. “I’ve started recording all the joke songs I make, because there’s so much joy in them,” says Lawrence. “Your ego is removed in that moment, so it’s a true snapshot of who you are—you’re getting out of the way, shutting your brain up, and letting your inside out.” Not only a direct path to the kind of unfettered creativity that propels all of Uncanny Valley, that approach closely aligns with the album’s underlying philosophy. “Technology needs a purpose and a motivation, but there’s nothing more human than doing something that makes no sense,” says Lawrence. “We’re just creating what resonates with us, and we couldn’t be more excited to put our truest artistic expression out into the world.”