The grimy DIY band Institute started a decade ago, when a bunch of members of Austin punk bands got together to make something different. The music that they make in Institute is a version of post-punk that occasionally veers off into psych-rock, but they keep the immediacy of the house-show hardcore that raised them. Institute released their third album Readjusting The Locks in 2019, after half the band moved to New York. Now, they’re announcing plans for their fourth.
This fall, Institute, now fully based in New York, will release their new LP Ragdoll Dance. After releasing their first three albums on Sacred Bones, Institute are dropping Ragdoll Dance on two different DIY punk labels. They recorded the LP at home, and the record is lo-fi enough that you can totally tell. But lo-fi suits this kind of music.
The title of Ragdoll Dance is a Siouxsie And The Banshees reference, and the sound of album opener “City” is a skittering, seething version of the muscular post-punk that the Banshees and their peers were making early on. Institute singer Moses Brown is also in Glue, the furious hardcore band that returned to the stage last year, and you can still hear that intensity in “City.” But this song refracts that intensity, turning it toward something more oblique. Below, check out “City” and the Ragdoll Dance tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 “City”
02 “Dopamine For My Baby”
03 “All The Time”
04 “Uncle Sam’s Hate”
05 “Where’s It Go?”
06 “Dead Zone”
07 “Wonder”
08 “Plateau Of Self”
09 “Warmonger”
Ragdoll Dance is out 10/13 on Roachleg Records in North America and La Vida Es Un Mus Discos elsewhere.
