Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck are reviving their supergroup Filthy Friends for a new album out May 3 via Kill Rock Stars. Titled Emerald Valley, the record follows 2016’s debut,Invitation, and sees the duo team up once again with The Minus 5’s Scott McCaughey and The Fastbacks’ Kurt Bloch while bringing in new drummer Linda Pitmon.
Our Song of the Day is the record’s ripping lead single “Last Chance County,” which was written by Tucker. She previously told Rolling Stone this about the song:
It’s about a teenage girl riding the bus through a depressed Northwest town in the 1980s, a version of myself and the frustration I saw there. Riding the bus to work, I saw people struggling to make ends meet and make sense of their lives. It’s disheartening that 30 years later, the struggle for working people might be even greater.
The title, Emerald Valley, is taken from the nickname for her hometown of Eugene, Oregon. “It’s a beautiful, green, lush valley filled with hippies, yuppies, loggers, farmers, migrant workers all trying to make a life for themselves,” she says. “We try and paint a picture of that for people.”
Filthy Friends will tour behind the new album, with a kickoff show in Seattle on Thursday, May 9 at Neumos.
Watch Filthy Friends’ 2017 KEXP in-studio performance below.
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