What have you lost?
You don’t have to say
Is it love?
Doesn’t have to be that way
There is a silence that sits heavier than thunder…a stillness that waits, watchful and bare. In matters of the heart, stillness is not absence, or comfort, but exposure: the raw, radiant hush between breath and confession. It is the moment before the touch, the pause before the truth, the ache of all that is unsaid. Motion distracts, disguises, deflects. Stillness demands. It is there that longing pools, fear flowers, and love – terrible, tender, unnamed – presses against the ribcage. To be still is to be seen without armour, to risk being unloved in the very moment you are most open.
Now Brooklyn-based outfit Bootblacks tackle this delicious limbo as they deliver Only You, the latest dispatch from their forthcoming album Paradise, due June 13 via Artoffact Records. Since 2010, they’ve carved their mark – sharp, clean, and deliberate – into the concrete of post-punk’s revival. Panther Almqvist, Barrett Hiatt, and Kalle Falleberg press forward, blending machine pulse with human precision, nostalgia with needlepoint control.
Only You evokes the lush longing and atmospheric ache of mid-‘80s synth-pop, echoing the romantic restraint of Thompson Twins, the grand emotional sweep of Simple Minds, the passion of Blancmange, and the suave sophistication of ABC. Repetition becomes incantation, circling around unspoken loss and fragile desire. There’s vulnerability in the stillness: words half-said, feelings half-known. It’s a soft stand-off between hope and hesitation, where love is questioned, but never fully denied…and obsession hums just beneath the surface.
Only You marks a deliberate detour for Bootblacks: a step away from their usual brooding churn toward something sleeker, stranger, and steeped in noir. Opening with Almqvist’s crooning whisper, it swiftly breaks out into glorious chorus. With Chris Vrenna (Nine Inch Nails) hammering the drums and Benjamin Harrison’s saxophone spiraling through the smoke, the track trades grit for glint. Synths swell, guitars echo like alleyway footsteps, and the whole piece hums with tension…half longing, half threat. A slow dance in a burning city. In short, Only You is slay the house down boot(blacks) good.
Listen to Only You below and order the single here. You can pre-order Paradise here.
Since assembling in 2010, Bootblacks have built their name not through noise alone, but through the discipline of movement, touring tirelessly across North America and Europe, tightening each performance into something sharp, taut, and unavoidable. Their sound, equal parts tension and lift, sits between modern machinery and nostalgic machinery, a careful collision of reflection and recoil.
Their first salvo, the Narrowed EP, arrived in 2012, following a collaboration with Jim Sclavunos of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Veins followed in 2016, a clear shift from punk’s ragged edges toward a sleeker, more deliberate post-punk pulse. With Fragments (2017), they leaned further into atmosphere and scale, adding size without sacrificing precision. The result placed them squarely on end-of-year lists and into festival lineups across the cold circuit: Cold Waves, Terminus, Absolution, Wave Gotik Treffen, A Murder of Crows. One thing is for certain: Bootblacks are always building, always bracing for what breaks next. We’re just happy to be along for the ride.
Bootblacks is gearing up for a tour throughout Europe (with a stop in Vancouver) this spring. Catch them on the following dates:
- Apr 25 Rust Copenhagen, Denmark
- Apr 29 Das Rind Rüsselsheim, Germany
- May 3 A38 Ship / A38 Hajó Budapest, Hungary
- May 6 MS Stubnitz Hamburg, Germany
- May 8 The Cobalt Vancouver, BC
- May 9 Tommyhaus Berlin, Germany
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