• News

• All

Nov 08, 2023 By Caleb Campbell

Super Cassette is an Oakland indie rock outfit led by singer/songwriter Max Gerlock. The band have been steadily sharing new singles for the past few years, knitting together various melodic strains of indie rock and power pop. Most recently, the band returned this year with a pair of new tracks, “Continue?” and “Path Through the Past.” These proved to be the first tastes of the band’s forthcoming debut album, Continue?, out on December 1st.

Continue? was initially written and produced in Gerlock’s garage, but then was reworked and reimagined with the help of producer and engineer Cole Williams who incorporated the full band into the mix. As Gerlock explains, “Making this record was a real time journey through a depressive episode. I’m out of that now, but it was a frustrating and hopeless time. I was genuinely questioning everything. Should I continue to make art? Should I continue living at all? This story ends with a really positive message. Yes, I should continue living. Yes, I should continue doing music. I need to find that compassion in myself. There’s beauty in the world. This album confronts the idea, ‘to be or not to be.’ It’s Hamlet-core.”

Ahead of the album’s release, the band are back today with another new single, “Continent,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Continent” is a chiming and melodic effort, introduced by an avalanche of dreamy guitar lines and playful melodies. Churning guitar chords, swaying rhythms, and wistful piano tones all come together into a blissful folk rock ramble, imbued with a joyous sense of hope and camaraderie. After the record’s many melancholic and existential turns, the album closes on a bright burst of life-affirming energy, with Gerlock celebrating friendship as a unifying bond: “We don’t face this alone / The parts compose a whole / This planet’s oceans bask in the sun / The islands warm as one.”

Gerlock says of the track, “‘Continent’ is probably my favorite song on the album. It marks the emergence out of the awful depressive fog outlined by the earlier songs on the album into a place of gratitude and connection with others. It’s funny — the original version of this song started with me recording basic parts for everything, then the band coming in one-by-one to do overdubs — but the version that ended up on the album is the full band playing live together. It was intended to just be for a fun live-in-studio video, but it sounded so damn good that we concluded we had to use it for the album. It made so much sense for a song about finding meaning in life through community and connection with others. That spirit is now in the recording. You can hear four people in a room tapping into something together. I’m just really happy we were able to capture that.”

Check out the song below. Continue? is out everywhere on December 1st.