Frontman van Ultra Q, Jakob Armstrong (jongste zoon van Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstong), deelt vandaag het nieuws over de komst van Ultra Q’s debuutalbum. Op 9 juni 2023 komt het album My Guardian Angel uit en vandaag deelt de band de nieuwe single VR Sex.

Een grote inspiratie voor de band is My Chemical Romance en dat is ook zeker terug te horen aan de scheurende gitaren. Ondanks het muzikale geweld, mogen we onderwerpen als verlies, isolatie en het omgaan met trauma verwachten. Het schrijven en werken aan deze plaat was dè manier voor de frontman om met deze emoties om te gaan.

Over de albumtitel zegt hij dan ook: “As cheesy as it may sound, writing this album was my guardian angel.” 

Fronted by Jakob Armstrong, the youngest son of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Ultra Q will share new single ‘VR Sex’ as well as announcing debut album My Guardian Angel out 9th June 2023 via Royal Mountain Records.

Premiering on BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders last night, ‘VR Sex’ looks toward shoegaze / dreampop as well as being inspired by My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. On the new single Armstrong said, “’VR Sex’ was the last song I wrote for this album. By the end of the writing process, I really didn’t have any idea what this record was going to be. Stylistically, It was mostly leaning toward shoegaze / dreampop with a few outliers here and there. When you write this many songs over a long period of time, eventually your taste is going to change and your interest will wane. This is the point where I rediscovered my love for MCR, specifically the second album. It deals with the period of time shortly after a close friend nearly passed in a car accident.”

Ultra Q’s debut album My Guardian Angel was produced by Chris Coady ( TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House) and it offers a deep sonic palette to match Armstrong’s artistic ambition. Wildly vacillating between widescreen pop-punk (‘Klepto’, the impeccably titled ‘VR Sex’), romantic new-wave (‘Rocket’, ‘I Wanna Lose’), and shimmering synth-pop (‘I Watched Them Go’), the album displays Armstrong’s songwriting talents—along with the musicianship of Kevin Judd and brothers Chris and Enzo Malaspina—conceived and recorded for maximum impact.

Emotional growing pains, sleepless nights, the ethereal allure of romance, and the notion of sound being so closely attached to memory are all wrapped up in clever guitar interplay reminiscent of the band’s formative influences, but delivered in an identity all their own. The words are attached to feelings we think are going to slip away from us in the fading and tarnished pallor of adulthood; truth be told, those feelings emerge just as freshly the older we get.

Armstrong adds about the album, “I don’t think there is a direct narrative to the album. But I can speak to the place I was in when writing. The record is about loss, and isolation. It’s about dealing with traumatic, life sized events that you don’t know how to confront until you do. Working on this project was my way of dealing with things. I don’t always know how to put it into words, but it’s the process and the feeling that helped me. Whether it’s yelling my favorite New Order lyrics over and over (“Saturday”), or the double time ravaging of the drums in “VR Sex”. As cheesy as it may sound, writing this album was my guardian angel.”

And that is the gift of My Guardian Angel, the implicit understanding that growth is merely a tool we use to better process the past slipping away from us.

My Guardian Angel is out 9th June.

More about Ultra Q:
 One of the most fascinating things a music lover can do is witness the growth of a young artist. It starts as an inkling or a glimmer of natural talent and expands into something vast and formidable.

Jakob Armstrong—youngest son of Green Day frontman Billie Joe—began playing guitar at seven years old and honed his craft privately until about sixteen, then playing in bands in and around Oakland after meeting friends with like-minded tastes in music. Soon enough, with the memories of Ultraman action figures fighting in his head, he and a group of friends he cultivated from those years playing around and pouring over records, formed Ultra Q. Its name is inspired by an Ultraman prequel series; a deep cut for import action series lovers.

Fusing together the skyward lift of Interpol, the clever guitar interplay of the Strokes, the maudlin romanticism of the Cure, and the often impressionistic narrative gifts of Arctic Monkeys, Ultra Q’s growth since their 2019 EP We’re Starting to Get Along (and its 2020 follow-up In a Cave in a Video Game) has been exponential. A traditional alternative rock sound was baked by the California heat, shards of broken glass gleaming in the sunlight, spanning the distance from Berkeley to Rodeo Drive. Over blaring guitars and thunderous drums, Armstrong’s voice is carried by a very familiar lilt, self-recorded by Armstrong on a whim while quarantined, could easily be slotted between the blown-out, lo-fi tones of early Wavves and the works of intentionally harsh-sounding Columbus band Psychedelic Horseshit.

Ultra Q’s earlier work marked the synthesis of a songwriter’s vision and his band’s ability, forged through an invisible existential threat and an ever-changing world, eager to show what they’ve found while we were all inside. But new album My Guardian Angel soars to heights unimaginable for us lowly, earthbound beings.

Produced by Chris Coady, who has helmed classics by the likes of TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Beach House, My Guardian Angel offers a deep sonic palette to match Armstrong’s artistic ambition. Wildly vacillating between widescreen pop-punk (“Klepto,” the impeccably titled “VR Sex”), romantic new-wave (“Rocket,” “I Wanna Lose”), and shimmering synth-pop (“I Watched Them Go”), the album displays Armstrong’s songwriting talents—along with the musicianship of Kevin Judd and brothers Chris and Enzo Malaspina—conceived and recorded for maximum impact.

Emotional growing pains, sleepless nights, the ethereal allure of romance, and the notion of sound being so closely attached to memory are all wrapped up in clever guitar interplay reminiscent of the band’s formative influences, but delivered in an identity all their own. The words are attached to feelings we think are going to slip away from us in the fading and tarnished pallor of adulthood; truth be told, those feelings emerge just as freshly the older we get.