American Motors have dropped a new single, ‘marlboro miles’, alongside a music video. It’s another grim preview of the Pennsylvania band’s forthcoming album Functional Music, following lead cut ‘No Horses’. Check it out below.
The group’s Dustin White said of the track: “A single without a chorus? Why not baby. In the times before thrift stores just threw out all photos and slides I found a photo of a woman laying in a bed surrounded by Marlboro Miles. It could’ve been Camel Cash, but I’m 100% sure it was some sort of cigarette related currency. Sadly that photo is lost to the abyss that is multiple cross country moves, time, and a general ‘fuck it’ attitude, but it lives in my mind. The first verse deals with a science fiction convention that takes place in Columbus, Ohio that we used to party at every year. It was magical. I saw a Star Wars Stormtrooper and a Klingon makeout there once. This song feels like the connective tissue between our first record and the new one. It seems like a good way to signal that not everything on the record has big pop moments and plenty of it still exists in the same murky reverb drenched hit then pause world that we love. This one is really fun to play live.”
Commenting on the video, Amanda Lee McCarty, aka Clotheshorse, added:
The concept of Marlboro Miles (the real ones, not the song) is pretty dark at its core: buy more stuff from us (and in this case, that particular stuff is going to shorten your life) and in exchange…we’ll give you some different stuff that will advertise the stuff we sell. This isn’t necessarily a unique marketing idea. Yes, tobacco brands used to do this, but even today, brands, airlines, and grocery stores give you the chance to save up points and get free stuff. It makes us spend more money. But is the free stuff really that great? And is it really free?
We wanted to convey the idea of long desired/’earned’ stuff that is now just sitting in a landfill or a thrift store, but we didn’t want to be as literal as ‘here’s a Marlboro hat.’ Another thing we see in a major way in thrift stores is stuffed animals. Like aisles and bins of them. Stuffed animals and Marlboro merch have similar lifespans: wanted (and sometimes earned – in elementary school, I negotiated a Smurfette stuffed animal in exchange for a painful medical test)…then abruptly, stuffed in a donation bin or trash can.
Functional Music lands on November 6 via Expert Work/The Ghost Is Clear/Vina Records.
