The Armoires - Green Hellfire At The 7-11
THE ARMOIRES celebrate the outpouring of critical acclaim for their album OCTOBERLAND on Best Of 2024 lists from critics and DJs worldwide with the release of one the record's key tracks as a single. “Green Hellfire At The 7-11”, out as a standalone track on March 21 and up for pre-save now, was named Song Of The Year by The Devil's Radio Fun Hour, just one of five #1 Record of the Year honors bestowed on the band (out of over three dozen Year's Best list inclusions, more than half of which saw them in the Top 25).
OCTOBERLAND, the fourth album from LA-based indie rockers THE ARMOIRES, already stood as a watershed work for the band even before landing on so many Year's Best Album lists. It was the moment where the band – singer-songwriters Christina Bulbenko and Rex Broome (keys and guitars respectively), violist Larysa Bulbenko, bassist Clifford Ulrich and drummer John M. Borack – coalesced their blend of chamber pop, postpunk, power pop and lit rock into a sound that's completely their own. Produced with an empathetic touch by Michael Simmons (sparkle*jets u.k.), it showcases the band moving their songwriting into the realm of world-building. Accompanied by visuals blending a vintage Art Nouveau look with postmodern iconography, the album draws in equal measure from pop and rock traditions from the '60 through the 21st century, but lands in a time and place of the band's own invention, embodied by its title.
“The album most definitely has a narrative and emotional arc when heard in full,” says Christina, “from the mission statement of 'We Absolutely Mean It' and the sense of challenges being faced on songs like 'Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse' through the hope and solace at the end, especially the closing track 'Music & Animals'. But along the way we're pretty lyrically unflinching about the world today. 'Green Hellfire' is very much part of that darker middle part of the story, confronting some of the frankly frightening cultural realities of recent years.” The song is built on that urgency, with a galloping beat and a musical setting that marries the harmony and cowpunk approach of X (or perhaps their rootsier alter-egos The Knitters) with the jangle of early R.E.M. and more than a touch of psychedelic unease courtesy of Larysa's striking string lines. “But we also built in some humor, and that count-along chorus... even at our bleakest, we feel there's gotta be something inviting, a sense that, through community, we can prevail.”
“It's really a simple story of a harrowing experience shared by a parent and their child,” adds Broome. “But it's emblematic of a bigger societal shift that's going to affect both of them, and all of us, going forward. We find that if a song's going to tackle a sociopolitical issue on the big stage, the best way to communicate that is by finding a human story that gets the emotions across personally. And as we often did in the songs on this album, we lean into some eerie, somewhat witchy imagery that's part of the underlying lore of Octoberland as a place. But it's decodable: the thing we say about the genie in the bottle in the first verse, it's not hard to work out who that is. The lyrics mention protest songs, and this is one, at its core... hope is pretty distant here, but the songs after this one on the album bring it back.” That's the journey of THE ARMOIRES on OCTOBERLAND, and doubtless part of the reason it's become such a critical favorite... and also why the record, and the place it describes, might be a welcome refuge in these trying times.
