I’ll disappear in the crowd
Trade my complexion for another round
Somehow I’ll piss away that money I found
Yeah, I swear I’ll always let you down
Time is a rotten comedian, always showing up late with a greasepaint grin and a broken watch, so maybe it makes perfect sense that Choir Boy comes back with a song called I’ll Always Let You Down and makes it sound like the sweetest possible collapse. That title alone lands like a kiss blown from the ledge of a very tall building.
Six years since their last album is long enough for expectation to turn feral, for fans to start checking the horizon like sailors with split lips, and Choir Boy seems perfectly aware of the absurdity. “Triumphantly return? Just say that we got lost,” they joke. Since the release of 2020’s Gathering Swans, Choir Boy has kept producing surrealist music videos, posting avant-garde content on social media, and performing live throughout North America and Europe. However, compared to their previous album, the absence of new music feels like an eternity to many in their loyal fanbase.. “Tell everyone the delays are my fault…blame everything on me,” Klopp asserts.
That cracked humour runs right into the bloodstream of the single. “I’ll Always Let You Down is an anti-love song; a sardonic self-indictment of a failing lover,” the band says. There it is: romance dragged through the mud by a man who knows he is carrying the bucket. The song lives in that awful little gap between longing and behavior, between wanting to be held and knowing your own hands are unreliable equipment. It aches with self-disgust, but it never wallows. It moves. It glides. It grins through broken teeth.
Musically, Choir Boy have always known how to dress damage in finery, and here they pull it off with real panache. Drum machines skitter with nervous purpose, the synth bass dirties up the floorboards, and those bright keyboard accents drift in like church light filtered through motel curtains. Adam Klopp sings from somewhere high and bruised, a voice that still feels touched by devotion even while confessing failure. You can hear parallels to Bronski Beat and The Associates in the way it all unfolds, but Choir Boy remains gloriously themselves: grand, wounded, a little camp, a little cruel, very funny when the world starts caving in.
Producer Jorge Elbrecht turns out to be the right co-conspirator, who had “a shared sense of humor about the bleakness,” according to the band. “In (the song’s) previous incarnation, before we were working with Jorge, there was something missing.” Elbrecht uncovered depth with motion, a fuller emotional mess, more air in the room, more rot in the roses.
And then there is the self-directed video, which plays like a hallucination: an archaeologist digging too deep and finding some primordial fool loose inside himself, like a crustpunk trapped in the dinosaur daydream of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Against these heavenly vocals, the imagery feels gleefully deranged. Perfect, really. Choir Boy came back wearing a clown’s oath and a wounded heart, and for once, disappointment sounds magnificent.
Watch the video for I’ll Always Let You Down below:
Listen to I’ll Always Let You Down below and order the song here.
Choir Boy supports AFI on their Holy Visions tour this month, before returning to the studio this Spring. They’ve also confirmed a performance at Darker Waves later this year. Tickets are available here.
Choir Boy (with AFI) Live Dates:
- Apr 17: Portland – Roseland Theater ~
- Apr 18: Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom ~
- Apr 20: Spokane, WA – The Big Dipper – Headline
- Apr 21: Missoula MT – The Wilma ~
- Apr 22: Boise, ID – Knitting Factory ~
- Apr 23: Sacramento, CA – Ace of Spades ~
- Apr 25: Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge – Headline
- Apr 27: Albuquerque, NM – Historic El Rey Theater ~
- Apr 28: Boulder, CO – Boulder Theater ~
- Apr 30: Omaha, NE – Admiral Theater ~
- May 01: Kansas City, MO – The Truman ~
- May 02: Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue ~
- Nov 14: Darker Waves – Huntington Beach, CA
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