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Sep 23, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Brittany Rose Queen

Boston-based indie rock outfit Kitner formed all the way back in 2015 as a casual collaboration born out of a love for scrappy melodic punk classics like the Get Up Kids and the Replacements. Following their 2016 debut EP, the band took a back seat, with several members also playing in Choke Up. Fortunately, that first creative spark didn’t dull in the intervening years.

Now, five years later, the band is back with their debut album, Shake The Spins, out October 1st via Relief Map Records. The band has already shared “Beth Israel” and “Junebug,” their first singles from the record, and today they’re back with another single, “Malden MA,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Malden MA” finds the band teetering on the edge of chaos, immediately launching into the track with a driving punk pace, searing guitar lines, and soulful harmonica solos. Reveling in the feedback drenched haze, Conor Maier delivers a melancholic, confessional vocal performance, sounding not unlike Conor Oberst’s cracked anguished howl. He sings, “I’m starving but not an artist/They say Pollack was too drunk to paint and that I’m too drunk to stand up straight/Too stubborn to ever try to change my ways.” Somehow, the band holds the whirling track together by the sheer force of their sharp melodies and electric chemistry, perfectly recreating the stumbling drunken poetry of their influences

As guitarist James Christopher explains, “For Malden, it was the first song we wrote when we got back together after a few years of not playing. But it was kind of like we never stopped, as this song came together in about 5 minutes and we had it done by the end of practice. When we recorded it we just wanted to sound like a Dinosaur Jr. song so not only are there guitar solos, but Conor and I both did feedback tracks over the whole song. You can even still hear them in the mix too.”

Check out the song below and watch for Shake The Spins, coming October 1st via Relief Map Records.