Seattle band Gibraltar has spent almost a decade walking a tightrope balance between indie-rock introspection and fist-pumping rock heroics. Their last full-length, 2017’s Let’s Get Beautiful, pretty much perfected that very fine line, with a set of songs that seamlessly incorporated elements of post-punk and goth music with the anthemic catharsis of classic rock artists like Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young.
Gibraltar’s latest single, “Better Than Yesterday,” more than maintains the band’s winning blend of rock classicism and wiry energy. And we’re proud to premiere the video for “Better Than Yesterday” here at Artist Home. It’s the second cut Gibraltar’s released from their third LP, Modern Mischief, due out in July. And sure enough, the track’s a killer.
The song goes all in, guns blazing at the outset. Band leader Aaron Starkey backs his impassioned howl with a tricky but incredibly catchy guitar riff as the band surges forward on a driving meat-and-potatoes groove. The band describes “Better Than Yesterday” as “a song about hope and finding some grounding in the process of waiting.” And as the world wrestles with the tension between the simultaneous arrival of COVID vaccinations and newer, more infectious variants of the virus, Gibraltar’s managed to create a pitch-perfect anthem for the moment we’re all in, right now.
The intensity of the track’s contrasted nicely by the deadpan humor in director Amethyst de Wolfe’s video. Gibraltar drummer Nick Biscardi schleps his way through a day that anyone who’s lived through the Coronavirus pandemic can relate to—cooking, feeding the pets, and doing chores in sometimes soul-numbing isolation, in between Zoom meetings with the rest of the band. The clip serves as the humorous (but no less truthful) flip side to the song’s themes of maintaining positivity and energy, even when both of those traits feel nearly impossible to muster.
In addition to the video, “Better Than Yesterday” is on sale at Bandcamp now.
