New Music From Charm School
Charm School is the latest project from Louisville, KY-born and LA-based multi-hyphenate artist Andrew Sellers and his longtime collaborators Matt Filip, Drew English & Brian Vega. Sellers grew up immersed in Louisville’s underground music scene, soaking up local legends like Slint, Crain, & Rodan, as well as the catalogs of Chicago’s famed indie labels Touch & Go and Drag City. Connecting the dots led to many an influential record plus a myriad of larger than life characters like Steve Albini (Big Black, Shellac), Will Oldham (Palace Brothers/Bonnie “Prince” Billy), David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol), John McIntyre (Tortoise, The For Carnation) & a host of other idiosyncratic iconoclasts, all of whom left their particular aesthetic mark on Sellers’ then 20-something mind. Add in a little Post-Punk pepper from PiL, Swell Maps & The Fall, a dash of Post-Hardcore salt from Fugazi & Nation of Ulysses, and Charm School’s influence recipe is fairly complete. Their first EP Finite Jest, released in July of 2023, introduced listeners to a philosophically minded, crushingly loud critique of modern life’s increasingly maddening realities. Their debut LP Debt Forever, from January 2025, introduced a broader range of stylistic influences and an even more acerbic viewpoint, its lyrics drenched in addictively salty, satirical humor.
Schadenfreude Ploy, out February 20, picks up where Debt Forever left off — with further musings on humanity’s collective tortured psyche and the many confounding implications of living in today’s technocratic hellscape. The concept of AI looms large, as well as modern life’s various manipulation traps which seem to be more and more ubiquitous and less and less escapable. The EP was tracked and mixed by Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording (Deerhoof, Built To Spill), with additional production and mixing by Solomon Krause-Imlach in Los Angeles. It was mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering Service (co-owned by Bob Weston of Shellac, a man whose musical past is weaved together tightly with Louisville’s). If there is any message in the record it is that reality is becoming increasingly blurred with something for which we don’t yet have the words. Lead single “Schadenfreude Ploy” is at radio now, alongside a cover of The Damned‘s “New Rose.”
“Emanating from a place where the B-52’s, PIL, The Fall, and Gang of Four might find a shared sonic playground.” -Post-Punk.com
“Charm School has tapped into a well of influence that includes both The Fall and Pere Ubu and more modern No Wave-esque post-punkers Lithics and Protomartyr.” -Queen City Sounds & Art
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Label: Surprise Mind
Goes For Adds 02/03
