Dan Luke and the Raid

Dan Luke and The Raid have released their debut album, Out of the Blue, today via New West Records. The 10-song set was produced by Bradley Shultz of Cage the Elephant, engineered by Jeremy Ferguson at Battle Tapes Recording in Nashville, TN and mixed by Ben Baptie (U2, Mark Ronson, The Growlers). From their appearance at Bonnaroo in 2018, Rolling Stone has already called the Bowling Green, KY-based outfit a “fully-formed-on-arrival band,” saying they “have a brand of garage-surf-meets-Floyd psychedelia that’s all its own.” Entertainment Weekly has also stated, “The group’s clangy music feels somehow both retro and futuristic,” comparing them to “The Beatles at their “Helter Skelter”-heaviest.” Billboard Magazine premiered the first video from Out of the Blue, for the single “Exoskeleton.” Both lyrically and musically, “Exoskeleton” is a blur of drugs and drinking and dancing, with frontman Daniel Shultz fretting, “My heart is racing/I’m about to pop.” The frenzied emotion is amplified by the music’s insistent beat and angular, darting guitars. See the Neighborhoods Apart-directed video HERE. Flood Magazine also premiered their video for the song “Fool," stating, “The track pulsates with a melodic sing-song quality, similar in tenor to early Strokes material. Ringing guitars and a bouncing bass line propel ‘Fool’ forward, chock-full of youthful energy and moxie.” See the Dylan Reyes directed video HERE. PopMatters also premiered the single “Black Cat Heavy Metal” and album closer “Last Goodbyes” as well, stating, “...the album features a series of songs that seem informed by the latter-day punky pop of the Strokes, the lo-fi pop energy of Guided by Voices, and the pure pop of the late 1960s. The music proves incredibly spontaneous, feeling as though it’s still being committed to tape as we’re listening.” Hear the songs HERE. Throughout the album’s 10 songs, people are passed out on curbs under neon signs, breaking hearts over rolled-up dollar bills, leaving baggies lying in passenger seats, and faking smiles and feeling ashamed. All the while, the music throbs and pulses and twitches and buzzes with the energy and enthusiasm and inexperience of youth, bursting with harsh, distorted guitar chords, blown-out synths squiggles and hopped-up rhythms - as well as, on occasion, moments of stunning and sincere melodic beauty. As much as the songs on Out of the Blue chronicle good, if somewhat illicit, times, they’re also just as much about the comedown afterward. Shultz says, “It’s like a coming-of-age crisis. It’s about being in that space in your 20s where you’re trying to get your shit together and figure things out in life. You’re dealing with your problems even as you’re going out and partying and getting into trouble all the time.” While Shultz’s family’s artistic inclinations stretch back at least a century, the most widely-disseminated fact about his upbringing is that two of his older brothers, Matt and Bradley, are co-founders of successful modern rockers Cage the Elephant. “It was a good, honest relationship in the studio,” Shultz says about having his brother Bradley behind the boards producing. “We love each other, so we can say, ‘Dude, I don’t fucking like that!’ and there’s no tension afterwards.” After completing Out of The Blue earlier this year, Dan Luke and the Raid traveled to Austin, TX for their debut appearance at the annual South by Southwest Festival, an experience, by all accounts, was among the highlights of their young career. “There was something special about those five shows we played,” Shultz says. “It was just the excitement of being there and living out the pursuit of our dreams.” Only a few weeks after that celebratory moment, things took a far more serious and tragic turn when guitarist Dylan T. Graves was involved in a work-related accident at his day job that, horrifically, took his life. Shultz recalls a phone call from band mates Anthony Joiner and Kendrick Don-Reid Brent, informing him of what happened. “I was in total shock, disbelief,” he says. “I went to Kendrick’s house and we just held each other and cried.” The question of how to continue on after the sudden loss of a close friend, especially at such a young age, is not an easy one to answer. Today, Shultz is perhaps no closer to figuring it out than he was at the time immediately following Graves’ death. “I remember Kendrick looking at me and saying ‘Dylan would be fucking pissed if we didn’t keep going,” Shultz says. “And I agreed with him. So the question wasn’t ‘Are we going to continue.’ It was ‘How do we continue?” And while he laments the fact that “more people won’t get to experience Dylan’s laughter and his love and his kindness,” Shultz also says that, at the very least, he’s “happy that we recorded something with Dylan, so that we and everyone who listens to our music will have something of his forever. Doing this band now is a constant reminder of Dylan and a way to continue to honor him. And that reminder is sometimes painful, but it’s also a reminder of the reason we do this at all, which is our love for each other and for the music.” Dan Luke and the Raid are currently on tour supporting Parlor Mob through October 18th. Today they have announced support dates with Starcrawler launching October 23rd in Boston, MA and additional dates supporting their labelmates Seratones beginning November 6th in Louisville, KY. Please see all dates below. Out of the Blue is available now on compact disc, across digital retailers, Standard Black Vinyl, Clear Halo with Blue Blob Colored Vinyl exclusively available at Independent Retailers, and Blue & Beige Splatter Colored Vinyl available directly from NEW WEST RECORDS.

Photo Credit: Dylan Reyes