The Armoires - Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse

With the new album OCTOBERLAND by THE ARMOIRES already in pre-order and due in its titular month, the rising Southern California indie-pop-rock combo puts forth one last single previewing the record: “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse”. Despite the grim title, it's a giddy, upbeat sing-and-spell-along rave-up, and one of the catchiest tunes in the band's catalog. The single (including a Radio Edit and the full-length Album Version) is out September 20 (to be followed by a hybrid animated/live action video) and it's up for pre-order/pre-save now.

There's always been a postpunk/new wave undercurrent to The Armoires, and on “Ridley & Me” the band goes all in, as the harmonies, jangle and viola of their signature sound map organically onto the kind of groove that brought New Order and The Cure their biggest and brightest hits. The “Single Edit” gets down to business right away, while the Album Version plays out like a Factory Records 12” mix, allowing the rhythm section of John M. Borack (drums) and Clifford Ulrich (bass) to cook during an extended intro before before vocalist-keyboardist Christina Bulbenko unleashes a massive, Gary Numan-inspired synth riff, chased by the 12-string of co-singer Rex Broome and the viola of Larysa Bulbenko... and then the harmonies kick in and the storytelling begins.

“The whole album is a series of stories,” says Bulbenko. “It's all about how stories, music, and art bind us together and offer us solace in dark times. 'Ridley & Me' is the song where we have the most fun with that. There are a lot of really funny, really 'meta' lines in this song, and we totally revel in them, even in this dystopian setting. We hope the listeners have fun singing along to that big bright chorus, where we challenge them to spell A-P-O-C-A-L-Y-P-S-E as fast as we do,” she laughs. “We sing about fighting for the future of what we call 'the artistocracy', and, as one of our other songs says, we absolutely mean it. We wrote this song before the phrase rose to prominence, but we'd happily classify ourselves as joyful warriors on this one.”

And just who is Ridley? That would be Ridley Broome, Rex's daughter (21), the graphic designer behind all of the dazzling, art-nouveau-inspired artwork for Octoberland and its related singles. “The real-life Ridley and me – our whole family, really – we're constantly engaged in an ongoing conversation about genre tropes, narrative conventions, the way storytelling works from its mythological beginnings to modern stuff like anime and videogames,” says Rex. “So the launchpad for the lyrics in this song was, what if we found ourselves inside one of those stories, in a sci-fi/fantasy setting after some some worldwide catastrophe? I could only imagine we'd just continue this life-affirming, joy-sparking conversation. What's the magical system here? When do we get to the transformation sequence? We're hearing some music, but is it real or just the soundtrack? We gleefully lean into the nerdiness of it. It's copium for trying times, as the bridge says.”

The previous singles from the album – the comfortingly sweet “Music & Animals”, the defiant psych-rock anthem “We Absolutely Mean It” and the poignant chamber pop of “Here Comes The Song” -- have all hinted at the world-building intent of THE ARMOIRES on OCTOBERLAND, and “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” distills the approach. “We're doing unapologetic lit-rock, but we're having fun with it,” says Broome. “These are like Leonard Cohen or Lou Reed songs, arranged and performed like a B-52's party album. They fit together and create a time and place of their own. And we can't wait to welcome our listeners to explore it for themselves.”