Stream: Numb.er, ‘Numerical Depression’

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Numb.er (Photo by James Sakert)
Numb.er (Photo by James Sakert)

Is “June gloom” still a thing in southern California? Hope so, because the debut album from Numb.er will be out just in time for it.

Numb.er (pronounced nummer, as in “more numb”) is the brainchild of photographer/visual artist Jeff Fribourg, once of the band Froth. If his post-punk/darkwave had a color palette, it would be shades of pale gray. Far from monochrome, though, Numb.er’s bummer anthems range from abrasively agitated to vaguely disaffected to bitingly bleak. They challenge in the same way Joy Division, Wire and Gang of Four did back in the day, but over the nine tracks on the album “Goodbye” (out May 25 via Felte), Numb.er never sinks to homage.

“Again” sneers along mercilessly (and beautifully) for three minutes; “A Memory Stained” engages in some murky psychedelia, like a flashback to an anxiety attack; and the new single “Numerical Depression” throbs maniacally in the here and now … “where every step that you must take / burns another bridge,” Fribourg chants. The song was inspired, he says, by the time he tried a change of scenery: “I once tried to move to New York in an effort to escape the changes going on in my life. The feeling of anxiety and sadness in making that decision is what gave birth to ‘Numerical Depression.’ Saying goodbye to everything you love is a truly grueling task and every second that you get closer to that reality can be heart breaking.

“I never did make it more than a week on a couch outside the city before I hopped into a tour van and made my way back to Los Angeles. In that, I learned you can’t really run from your depression and the only way to feel alright is to face it. This track was a coping mechanism for all those feelings.”

||| Stream: “Numerical Depression”

||| Also: Stream “A Memory Stained”

||| Live: Numb.er is doing the free Monday night residency at the Echo: May 14 with the C.I.A., Rumblepak and Paige Emery; May 21 with POW!, Hit Bargain and Circuit Break; and May 28 with Feels, Adult Books and Duress.

||| Previously: “Again”