Los Angeles band Drag Talk have shared ‘Would It Kill You’, the latest single from their debut album ‘Drink The Ocean’, out October 30 through MNRK Heavy.

The band came together in 2021 from a group of musicians whose paths had crossed many times before. Guitarist Ross O’Carroll, vocalist Jutty Taylor and drummer Hayden Scott had already played together, while Taylor and Scott also spent time in Ghost. O’Carroll and guitarist Matt Ripp Bennett had known each other since school in Hawaii, and Bennett had previously played with fellow guitarist Neil Popkin in War Tapes.

So although Drag Talk are still a relatively young band, there is a lot of shared history underneath it.

O’Carroll puts their musical starting point rather neatly: “I feel like we’re hardcore punk dudes who love Oasis.”

The first Drag Talk ideas came from demos he made at home during the pandemic. Taylor, meanwhile, arrived without much attachment to the shoegaze records his bandmates knew inside out.

“Whereas my bandmates are definitely more schooled in the encyclopedic aesthetic of just beautiful ’90s guitar rock, I kind of rely on my own ignorance when it comes to putting my own voice on it,” he says. “This fucking guy who’s never heard a shoegaze record!”

‘Would It Kill You’ is one of the louder songs on the album, with the band moving between dense guitars and a much more open vocal melody.

Taylor describes its subject rather cryptically as “the occupational hazards of doing one’s True Will.”

The phrase fits with some of the spiritual and esoteric ideas that turn up elsewhere on ‘Drink The Ocean’. Across the record, Taylor also writes about injustice, femininity, gambling and personal upheaval, without tying everything into one fixed story.

Even the album title is deliberately open.

“It’s an impossible task but you can spend your life trying, it might be fun!” Taylor says. “Maybe that’s what the record felt like for some of us, drowning in liberation!”

Drag Talk recorded ‘Drink The Ocean’ with producer Tom Syrowski, an old friend of the band whose credits include The Killers and Mastodon. Sessions took place at his Los Angeles home and at Henson Studios in Hollywood.

There are a couple of guests too. Brendan O’Brien plays Hammond organ on the title track, while Olivia Morreale contributes backing vocals to ‘Welcome to the Aeon’.

The album follows Drag Talk’s 2022 debut single ‘Egyptian Flesh’, the ‘Dogs’ EP from 2023 and ‘Rosy Crown’ from 2024.

Headline credit: Yiyi Wan.

Drag Talk Website Instagram / X / Bandcamp