You Say Party Return with New Song, Lay Out Future Plans

Published Jan 16, 2013

Last September, we learned that the members of You Say Party had reunited as a four-piece, with drum programming substituting for the late Devon Clifford . At the time, the Vancouver unit hinted that new material would arrive sometime in the future, and that moment is now. The revamped outfit have just revealed "Friend," their first new tune in four years, and you can listen to it down below.Speaking with Exclaim!, keyboardist Krista Loewen notes that the track is dedicated to their fallen bandmate, a fact accentuated by vocalist Becky Ninkovic's soft and heart-breaking coo on the cut ("I can see my friend no more / He's gone for good, He's gone for sure")."Friend," which you can stream below and purchase on You Say Party's Bandcamp page, stands out from the rest of the band's back catalogue, from their early dance punk roots up to 2009's floor-filling XXXX . The song plays a little more low-key, with electronic pumps and ticks and the sound of rainfall settling beneath a cloudy bed of synth tones."It's kind of a stepping stone to what we're doing next. Our new sound is quite a bit different form our old sound," Loewen explains. She adds that more material is expected later this spring, though she can't confirm whether it will arrive as another single, or as an LP.You Say Party will also be back onstage sometime in 2013, though Loewen says that their touring schedule won't be as lengthy or globe-scouring as it once was. A reasonable explanation for the slow-down could be that Ninkovic and bassist Stephen O'Shea just had their first child.Loewen adds, "In the past, we were hitting it hard and really going for it. We're taking every moment as it comes now. We're releasing this song; we're going to release something more in the next few months... We're going to perform later this year but we really don't know what that looks like yet. We're just taking it one step at a time, and focusing on our relationship and creating together."