Johnstonsons, the Detroit new-wave duo of John River and Stonny Moon, introduce Hard II Impersonate with Burning For You, a first single built around the point where a song catches fire and starts spreading before anyone can name the damage. Friends from way back, River and Moon spent three years, a few wrong turns, and one sharp-eared ally in Trey Frye finding the shape of their band; now Burning For You, out ahead of the album’s October 16 release on à La Carte Records, moves like a dare whispered from the passenger seat while the streetlights blur.
The reference points are obvious enough to be useful and slippery enough to avoid museum rot: Talk Talk’s theatrical ache, Tears For Fears’ broad-shouldered drama, XTC’s twitch, a touch of Don Henley driving through glassy suburban dread with his collar up. Burning For You rides on guitar lines that cut clean without posing, synth parts that glow around the corners, and drums that hit with the impatient thud of somebody pounding a dashboard. The vocals take the big swing.
The lyrics describe a destructive blaze overtaking a social scene, turning youthful abandon into panic and fatal urgency. Images of children trapped, a cigarette, an open window, and summer’s end suggest pleasure tipping into disaster. The repeated question about recognizing the right moment reveals dread, uncertainty, and helplessness, while the final devotion frames desire itself as consuming, dangerous, and irreversible.
Trey Frye of Korine mixes and masters with polish, yet the polish never smothers the weird little human angle of the duo, the sense that two lifers finally found the frequency they had been circling since adolescence.
“We tried our best to invoke what we love about new wave – big moments that swing between power and dancing, the dramatic vocals of masters like Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) and Roland Orzabal (Tears For Fears), soaring guitars, and emotional pay off,” says the band. “Working with Trey helped us craft the finer details on the production. From the shimmering synths to the pounding drums, he knew how to elevate our songs into ballads. When it came to the video, our good friend, Carrie Pitzer, wanted to instill that night time cruising feeling that compounds off nostalgia and longing.”
Pitzer’s video leans into the song’s cheap-jacket sleek glamour: the band moving through dark streets, stickers slapped onto lightposts, cigarettes turning the air into a small crime scene, performance shots jammed in like proof that this machine still needs bodies to run.
Watch the video for Burning For You below:
At twenty-eight minutes, Hard II Impersonate should leave no room for fat, and Burning For You suggests Johnstonsons know the old pop secret: make the hook hurt, keep the beat moving, and leave before anyone starts checking their pockets for its number.
Listen to Burning For You below and order the single here.
Hard II Impersonate by JOHNSTONSONS
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The post “Will I Know It’s Time?” — Detroit New Wave Duo JOHNSTONSONS Ignite in Video for “Burning For You” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.