Atlanta-based atmospheric alt-pop duo I Am a Rocketship present their new single ‘Do You Feel Good’, a powerful introduction to their forthcoming album ‘La Cruella’, a collection of ten tracks about uncertainty, fear and dreams.
‘Do You Feel Good’ is about how people transform into their perceived personas – from folks wanting to dress like Instagram influencers when they travel, to politicians creating fictional back stories, this song asks if you truly feel good once you are an artificial construct.
Always based around melodies, I Am a Rocketship mixes warm vocals, loud guitars, and cool electronic beats to explore that place where rock and trip-hop never quite met.
While I Am a Rocketship is a self-contained duo (writing, recording, and creating art and videos themselves), this single represents the first time they have enlisted an outside contributor – Kellii Scott. Perhaps best known as the drummer for the legendary band Failure and his work with other artists, including Veruca Salt, Dr. Dre, Pink, Enemy and Christina Aguilera.
“We tried a different way of writing songs for this album, and it turned out that every song had a story. Since our musical style has changed a bit with this album, the way that the lyrics tell those stories has changed as well. These songs don’t spell out what is happening but are about feelings. We hope people will find something to recognize, maybe feel that one of the song speaks to them,” says frontwoman L E Kippner.
“It was fun adding Kelli’s drums to our sound. He recorded the drums separately and the final song didn’t end up at all like we expected because when we heard the drums it inspired a lot of changes to the rest. I wouldn’t mind doing more collaborative work in the future.”
Before I Am a Rocketship, Eric Weissinger was a bassist and guitarist backing up various artists and opening for the likes of The Wedding Present, The Black Crowes and James. Everything changed due to a chance meeting with L E Kippner – cellist, scientist, radio DJ and singer for Swedish synth-pop duo Neobox. After forming Hitchcock Blondes in Ohio, they relocated to Atlanta to try new ideas and launched I Am a Rocketship, for which their music has been warmly met across the world.
‘La Cruella’ will be the band’s sixth major release, following their 2016 debut album ‘Mission Control’, the ‘Mind Grafitti’ album (2019), ‘Ghost Stories’ album (2020), the ‘oRAnGE’ EP (2020) and the latest long-player ‘Lies and Legends’ (2021).
“We just let go on this album, and often jokingly said “well, this is going to kill any reputation we had.” It’s very pure, for want of a better term. We just wrote what we felt,” explains Eric Weissinger.
“This album is more improvisational than the others. A lot of the instrumental tracks were first takes, no punches or correcting. I wouldn’t say there was less thought put into this, but it was less planned than our other albums.”
‘Do You Feel Good’ is available as a Bandcamp exclusive. On August 4, the full ‘La Cruella’ album will be released on all fine music platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music.
