Strange Pains share the single Lucifer Disguised as their album slips to October

Strange Pains, the project of the Providence musician Ted Bradley, released a song called Lucifer Disguised on 18 September. The album it belongs to did not arrive with it. The Diamond District, Volume 1 had been booked for that same day and has been pushed to October, so the single now goes out ahead of a record rather than alongside one.

The delayed album is the first half of a planned two-LP set, which is an unusual amount of material for an act at this stage of its life. Splitting a body of songs across two records is a decision about pacing as much as running time, and it means the October release is a first instalment rather than a self-contained statement.

Bradley did not make it alone. Joseph D'Agostino produced, engineered and mixed the album, taking on all three jobs rather than the single production credit most records carry. D'Agostino fronted Cymbals Eat Guitars and now leads Empty Country, the band Bradley plays in, so the two had spent years in the same rooms before either of them sat down with these songs.

That connection is worth reading into the music. Empty Country records tend to run long and lean on narrative writing rather than hooks, and a producer who works that way brings those instincts to whatever else he touches. Stereogum, which posted the song on the afternoon of the eighteenth, framed Lucifer Disguised as the first real look at what the pairing sounds like.

No label, tracklist or firm October date has been published for The Diamond District, Volume 1, and nothing has been said publicly about when the second volume follows. We track confirmed dates as they land on the release calendar, and more from the same corner of the scene sits on our indie hub.