• News

• All

Feb 13, 2025 By Mark Redfern Photography by Yoonha Park / Marlaena Moore / Jon Sherman

Canadian post-punkers Preoccupations have announced a new album, Ill at Ease, and shared its first single, “Focus.” They’ve also announced some tour dates. Ill at Ease is due out May 9 via Born Loser. Below, check out the single, album details, and tour dates.

Ill at Ease is the band’s fifth album and the follow-up to 2022’s Arrangements and 2018’s amusingly titled New Material.

Preoccupations is Matt Flegel (vocals, bass), Scott Munro (guitar, synth), Daniel Christiansen (guitar), and Mike Wallace (drums).

Flegel had this to say about the new album in a press release: “The well of dark things to write about seemingly has not dried up, and lyrically, it’s where I still tend to draw from. Draining all my anxieties into a song is often the only way I can get through a day. Some songs exist in a world with barren plains of burnt earth, covered in a dust of shame, dread, death, where all the things I love are things that kill me. Some come from the perspective of another distant world, looking skyward into a science fiction ocean of space, solitude, slight hope. Sometimes I’m looking around at the world that we live in now with incredulity, hilariously dissatisfied with how it’s all turned out, and assuming that it can’t be long before it’s all over. Some songs are just a reflection of me looking down at my feet while I trudge along wondering what I’m doing with myself, and if the ground is going to fall out from underneath me at any given moment.”

Of “Focus” Flegel adds: “Focus…or the lack thereof. Shame and regret: waking up with it, not being able to sleep because of it, and finally falling asleep and having nightmares about it. I put myself a thousand years in the future with these same feelings. While having so many better things to be worried about, as the world falls apart, still finding it impossible to look past meaningless misgivings.”

Read our 2016 interview with Preoccupations.

Read our 2018 interview with Preoccupations on New Material.

Ill at Ease Tracklist:

1. Focus
2. Bastards
3. Ill At Ease
4. Retrograde
5. Andromeda
6. Panic
7. Sken
8. Krem2

Preoccupations Tour Dates:

05/22/25 Montréal, QC @Bar Le Ritz PDB
05/23/25 Ottawa, ON @The 27 Club
05/24/25 Toronto, ON @Lee’s Palace
05/27/25 Detroit, MI @Lager House
05/31/25 Chicago, IL @The Empty Bottle
06/01/25 Minneapolis, @MN 7th St Entry
06/04/25 Calgary, AB @Commonwealth
06/06/25 Vancouver, BC @Wise Hall
06/07/25 Seattle, WA @Madame Lou’s
06/08/25 Portland, OR @Polaris Hall
06/10/25 San Francisco, CA @Rickshaw Stop
06/12/25 Los Angeles, CA @Lodge Room
06/13/25 San Diego, CA @Casbah
06/17/25 Austin, TX @Parish
06/18/25 Denton, TX @Rubber Gloves
06/20/25 Nashville, TN @The Blue Room-Third Man Records
06/21/25 Atlanta, GA @The Masquerade(Purgatory)
06/22/25 Raleigh, NC @Kings
06/24/25 Washington, DC @Songbyrd Record Cafe
06/25/25 Philadelphia, PA @Johnny Brenda’s
06/27/25 New York, NY @Bowery Ballroom
06/29/25 Cambridge, MA @Middle East Upstairs

Subscribe to Under the Radar’s print magazine.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.