[Cover photo credit to Chuck Przbyl]
Chicago-based Rock band Michelles, spearheaded by one Michael Daly, have shared a new single, “Illusions”, and announced their forthcoming album, The Empty Promises of Rock and Roll, set for release on March 8, 2022. The song marks the first music Michelles has released since 2017’s album, Dark As A Daisy.
Michael Daly talks about the lead single from the album:
“Illusions” was one of the last songs written for the album. Lyrically, it dances around the idea of the masks we wear, literally and metaphorically, the desire to transcend these disguises, and how on some days it really does feel like the sky is falling, but you have to have some lingering faith in the universe just to get up and do it all again.
Speaking on the origins of the album’s title, Daly writes:
The title, The Empty Promises of Rock and Roll, was lifted from a lyric from the previous record [Dark as a Daisy]. At the time I was thinking about the sort of melancholic feeling you can have after playing a show, whether it was good or bad, “empty head, empty pockets, empty soul, the empty promises of rock and roll.” But in this context, it hints at the contradictions that are inherent in creating music, how one has to hold the diametrically opposed feelings of extreme and sometimes unwarranted self-confidence and crippling doubt simultaneously, and hope that some sort of balance is achieved that allows you to write a few verses and a catchy chorus with a nice middle eight thrown in for good measure.
Arriving five years after the previous release, the new record, took its time “due to circumstances both personal and global, with entire versions of the album being discarded and redone, and lyrics and arrangements constantly shifting and evolving”. The band also notes that “in a cultural landscape that values an unceasing torrent of content above all else, nurturing scarcity and practicing patience become revolutionary acts”.
