Free Throw is proud to share the new single ‘Ocular Pat Down’ with a Jez Pennington animated video that doubles as an homage to many of the venues they’ve missed playing in over the past year and a half. The sentiment is in keeping with Nashville band’s new album Piecing It Together, which finds them taking stock in what they value in life as well as some of the things taken for granted before touring life came to a crashing halt. The Will Yip (Bartees Strange, The Menzingers, Tigers Jaw) produced album is out June 25th on Triple Crown Records.
“Ocular Pat Down is a song about people who can’t seem to put others before themselves, but will always be the first to get on a fake pedestal,” says drummer Kevin Garcia, “Throughout the last year, we saw so many venues, bars, etc that have felt like second homes to us on the road and at home, suffer immensely because of the pandemic. First to close, last to open, last to get the support. We wanted to highlight some of these places in the Ocular Pat Down video and bring some attention to a few killer venues that are still very much hurting or have had to close their doors for good.”
It follows the release of early singles ‘Cloud Sick’ and ‘Down & Out’. The music videos for each song exist within the same cinematic universe, with the video for ‘Down & Out’ playing the role of the lost VHS tape the band were seen frantically searching for across Nashville in the video for ‘Cloud Sick‘.
With Piecing It Together, their fourth full-length album, Free Throw documents their growth as individuals grappling with the hard truths, that with age, become harder to ignore or cover up with an endless string of late nights out drinking with friends. After a decade of hard work, including countless performances worldwide, the members — Cory Castro, Lawrence Warner, Justin Castro, Jake Hughes, and Kevin Garcia — have a fresh perspective on life. The band is through obsessing over what comes next and romanticising the moments that have already passed. Instead, with some time they didn’t know they needed away from gas station snacks and “free” drink tickets, Free Throw is making music about the present, and how seeking balance in our lives is far more meaningful work than the endless pursuit of whatever we deem to be ‘enough.’“In normal times, it’s very hard for a band like us to feel as if we have the freedom to take time off,” Garcia explains. “We’d go home to write and record, then we go on tour. Rinse and repeat.” In a way, writing and recording an album in 2020 was comparable to being a band in a control group in a scientific study. What road would they take with all of the usual outside influences held at bay? “When we got into this writing process, we stopped feeling like we existed in a mould or on a path that we were supposed to keep going on with our contemporaries,” relates Garcia. “We stopped worrying about what tour we may be fighting for next or what some other band was doing. We were just in a vacuum, writing songs for our own enjoyment.”Throughout the album’s twelve tracks, Piecing It Together finds Free Throw abandoning childhood notions of success and happiness through a thorough exploration of personal fulfilment. It’s about reaching the heights that once felt impossible and everything that comes after. How no matter what we do or where we go, we must continue to wake up and find the strength to keep on keeping on despite everything we tell ourselves about ourselves. Piecing It Together is an exploration of self-acceptance, and Free Throw invites everyone to join.
