Kevin Bronson on April 29th, 2020

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L.A. quartet New Media play tag with a couple decades of alternative rock history on their first two singles of 2020, creating fever dreams of stinging, twining guitars, propulsive rhythms and opaque lyrics reminiscent of any number of post-punk and shoegaze standouts.

The band is comprised of singer-guitarist Zach Noel, bassist Jack Meighan, guitarist Tamara Simons and drummer Julien Nicolai — “four millennials with an eclectic record collection,” they say. New Media tosses and turns in nocturnal anxiety on their new single “Tunnel Vision,” which comes out May 5. It’s the sound of not being able to get to sleep: “Lost in the sounds outside / as I lie awake at night,” Noel sings.

Which, it turns out, is not necessarily a bad thing. “‘Tunnel Vision’ is about the link between insomnia and inspiration,” the band says. “It’s that 3 o’clock in the morning feeling when the subconscious mind is at its most active. Every car outside, every seemingly insignificant noise or stimuli steals your focus towards it, like a magnet. Watching (and hearing) the sound of traffic gliding up and down ‘rain-soaked streets’ from an obscured hotel window and that intellectual tug-of-war that plays out, between wanting to capture it and letting the thought pass. It’s that intense obsessive compulsion of chasing an idea to its creative fruition, that feverish intensity that can take on a kind of ‘tunnel vision,’ where the mind has the desire to wade ever-deeper into the waters of the subconsciousness, while one foot remains in the shallow edge of the water.”

As the guitars crescendo and wash ashore in your mind, you might curse the fact that some of the best ah-hah moments arrive at 3 a.m. Or you might get out of bed and create something.

||| Stream: “Tunnel Vision”

||| Also: Stream “Thin Ice”