Hotline TNT

Today, Hotline TNT — the New York based project fronted by Will Anderson — unveils their new single/video, “Out of Town,” from their forthcoming album, Cartwheel, out November 3rd on Third Man Records. After being previewed throughout the week via a PC “Kaxtyn” game hosted on Anderson’s online hub, assnup.com, “Out of Town” is now widely available in its straightforward, stomp-along glory.  “Out of Town” is a perfectly rendered rush of sweet possibility and potential regret, exploring infatuation and the resulting isolation as though Anderson were watching a beautiful ship sail away, as he holds the ticket he worked hard to afford.

“Out Of Town” follows lead single “I Thought You’d Change” — praised by Paste as “an absolute doozy of shoegaze-inspired brilliance about the give-and-gos of a romance that’s cascading toward the wayside” —  as well as “Protocol,” of which The FADER hailed: “They’ve never sounded better than on ‘Protocol.’”Of “Out of Town,” Anderson adds: “These days most people wouldn’t have the foolishness to start a song by singing the words ‘baby girl’ but I wanted to channel my Minnesotan roots and try it out, Paul Westerberg style. Matter of fact I think his influence is all over this tune, we had to betray the Bob Mould guidance one of these days and see how the other half lives. This one’s about losing someone you’re excited about before you even realized you had strong feelings about ‘em.”

Cartwheel is the band’s follow-up to Nineteen In Love, a record that’s influence has spread through fervent word-of-mouth these last couple of years. Hotline TNT toured relentlessly, enduring seemingly endless lineup shifts to become a linchpin of several interconnecting DIY scenes. Their audience steadily ballooned, with Nineteen in Love becoming a coveted LP. Cartwheel, however, transcends those scene associations to become something greater—a classic encapsulation of youthful ardor, fading into adulthood’s grim acceptance. It is a beautiful, radical, and engrossing record about trying to find what most of us have not yet attained: fulfillment.

With Cartwheel, Anderson made the leap, as he’s often done in love and life and music, and ended up making one of the year’s most sweeping and affirming statements. Cartwheel is an endlessly romantic testament to reaching for something that slips forever out of grasp. The byproduct of Anderson’s decades-long quest to pin down the surging sound long in his head, Hotline TNT has come to notice in the last four years through loose association with a feverish surge of shoegaze revivalism. And Hotline TNT indeed trucks in the touchstones you might expect: skywriting guitars that bathe in fluorescent hazes of distortion, blown-out drums that pound as though they’re trying to escape a concrete box, and honeyed vocals that try to rise above the chaotic mess in true-to-life mimesis.

Anderson plays and sings nearly every note on Cartwheel himself. He recorded the bulk of these songs during two very different sessions: one with prolific art-pop-punk auteur Ian Teeple (Silicone Prairie), who pushed him to keep working on every idea, and one with bicoastal engineer Aron Kobayashi Rich (Momma), who encouraged him to get ideas down and keep moving forward. But Cartwheel itself is seamless, with notions of bedroom studio largesse and punk simplicity perfectly coiled inside Anderson’s catastrophic visions of true love.

Hotline TNT is currently underway on a fall US tour, bringing their storied live set to a slew of cities. Remaining dates include stops in Cleveland, Milwaukee, and a performance tonight in St. Louis, followed by an overseas run.  Additionally, they have just announced 2024 US tour dates, supporting Wednesday. A full list of upcoming tour dates is below and tickets are on sale now.