Kevin Bronson on January 14th, 2019

1

On Thursday night, at a 5-buck surprise show at the Echo, Bad Suns led their set with the single “Away We Go,” an urgent plea for (in this order) “some kind of connection, “divine intervention” and “mystic truth.” There was no shortage of connection with their fresh-faced fans, who learned of the first-come, first-in show only that morning and by 4 p.m. had formed a line that snaked a full block west to gain entry.

“We’ve got to have some of the most dedicated fans out there,” frontman Christo Bowman says in a telephone interview the next afternoon. “We go to so many shows where the audience have their arms folded or [are looking at their phones]. But we can feel the energy; it’s palpable.”

As for “divine intervention,” Bowman, 24, points to Bad Suns’ origin story: four guys who got together before they were old enough to drink, carrying on as if rock bands can still move mountains.

And “Mystic Truth”? That’s the title of Bad Suns’ third album, announced today. It will be out March 22 via the quartet’s new label home home, Epitaph Records.

The title was inspired by a work by installation artist Bruce Nauman exhibited at London’s Tate Modern, which Bowman visited while on tour. In blue, spiraled cursive, the neon-and-glass piece spells out a possibly paradoxical statement: “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths.” Says Bowman: “It made an immediate impression on me. It begs a lot of questions, and it did strike me as being tongue-in-cheek, especially in the context of the exhibition. The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought there’s no need to replace sincerity with irony. They can co-exist. And it felt like a very specific truth had been revealed to me right there.”

In the album announcement, he elaborates: “I thought that connected back to the message of the record, which is about finding the extraordinary in very simple things, even though we’re living in a very dark time right now. Instead of succumbing to that darkness, I think you’ve got to try to hold onto some optimism, and try to uncover those simple miracles so you don’t lose the plot of what’s really important.”

The dark times are referenced subtly on “Mystic Truth,” which reveals Bowman and bandmates Ray Libby (lead guitar), Gavin Bennett (bass) and Miles Morris (drums) as earnest proponents for seeking the good, this time less reliant on post-punk formulas and stretching for more stylistic breadth– somewhere between the Killers and the 1975, if you will– and admittedly a work in progress.

We can’t let the negative aspects weigh us down — we’re excited to be alive right now.

“We know we have to keep pushing,” Bowman says. “We’re trying to make songs that talk about where we are in life, to take what we see and feel and turn that into some kind of cocktail. We can’t let the negative aspects weigh us down — we’re excited to be alive right now.”

After touring behind their second album, “Disappear Here,” the tight-knit unit moved into a house together in 2017. “It was important and helpful in creating a hive mind,” Bowman says. “After touring together, we figured if we don’t hate each other after this, we’re gonna make it.”

Made with Dave Sardy (who has produced albums by Oasis, Death From Above 1979, Catfish and the Bottlemen and the Airborne Toxic Event, among many others) at Sunset Sound and at Sardy’s home studio, “Mystic Truth” arrives at a time rock music is struggling to find any cultural currency.

“As long as I can remember, people have been saying rock is dead, but that’s the music that has always resonated with me,” Bowman says. “Sometimes I wonder if we had started 10 years later what course we would have taken.

“We know we have our work cut out for us. The challenge for us is to just write songs that are really good.”

Bad Suns’ Christo Bowman, in Palm Springs

Out today is the new single “Hold Your Fire,” a shimmering pop song that Bowman explains is “about a relationship that’s not working out, and it represents that moment when you decide to just accept that it’s over instead of trying to fight.” The song seemingly materialized out of the desert while the band was on a writing trip in Palm Springs, staying in a dome house overlooking a windmill farm. “We were playing late at night and looking out at all the stars and the windmills,” he says, “and ‘Hold Your Fire’ just came out of nowhere.”

Divine intervention? Could be.

“We’re pretty transparent guys, we have no secrets,” Bowman says. “We’re just four like-minded guys the universe brought together.”

||| Stream: “Hold Your Fire”

||| Watch: The video for “Away We Go”

||| Live: Bad Suns headline the Observatory on May 10 (tickets) and the Wiltern on May 11 (tickets). Tickets for both shows go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday.

||| Previously: Live at the Fonda Theatre, live at the Teragram Ballroom, “Disappear Here,” “We Move Like the Ocean,” “Cardiac Arrest”