My Wonderful Boyfriend Sign to New West Records and Share “Chip City”

My Wonderful Boyfriend have signed to New West Records, and their first release under the deal is “Chip City,” a track that sounds like it was recorded in a room where nobody was especially concerned with getting it clean. The Brooklyn trio’s guitars are scraggly and slightly out of tune with each other, the rhythm lurches, and the whole thing carries the creak of early Modest Mouse, a comparison that has followed a certain strain of guitar music for two decades now and shows few signs of loosening its grip.

It follows the band’s debut EP, An Evening With…, and last year’s one-off single “I’m Your Man,” and it arrives with a video directed by Godfrey Nares.

Frontman PJ McCormick describes the song in plain terms: “This is a love song from a guy who is a little drunker than he thinks he is. He’s a romantic, but he isn’t really finding the right words. He’s putting all his eggs in one basket, and it isn’t wise. He’s losing the plot. There’s maybe a line or two in the outro where he sobers up enough to get the picture.”

That description maps onto the performance. The song doesn’t present its narrator’s confusion as charming or as a joke. It plays it as a condition, something the character is stuck inside while the music keeps moving underneath him. The signing gives the band a larger platform than the scattered singles and one EP have so far. “Chip City” suggests they aren’t in a hurry to sound more settled than they are.