Deer Tick

The ninth studio album from Deer Tick, Coin-O-Matic casts a bright light on a little-known facet of the American mythos: the hidden histories of the band's home state of Rhode Island, where the everyday dramas of working-class families long collided with the menace of the mafia underworld.

As they tapped into their infinite fascination with that strange duality, singer/guitarist John McCauley, guitarist/singer Ian O'Neil, drummer/singer Dennis Ryan, and bassist Christopher Ryan assembled a batch of songs exploring desperation, grief, redemption, and resilience with both cinematic detail and lived-in emotionality.

A sharp new turn from one of indie-rock's most enduringly vital forces, Coin-O-Matic arrives as a complicated love letter to a way of life slowly slipping from the collective memory. S. history.

"If you grew up in Rhode Island years ago, you'd see all these mobsters on the news and then run into them at a restaurant on Federal Hill," says McCauley, referring to Providence's version of Little Italy.

"They were criminals but also very colorful characters, and I wanted the album to partly reflect a certain nostalgia for that kind of seediness.

"Recorded at Deer Tick's home studio, Coin-O-Matic marks their first self-produced album in their two-decade-plus lifespan, during which they've enlisted A-list producers like Dave Fridmann (a Grammy-winner known for his work with The Flaming Lips and Spoon).

"At first it was daunting not to have that extra ear in the studio, but it felt like the right time to peel off the Band-Aid and fully trust ourselves," says O'Neil.