New York art-rock quintet Ecce Shnak (pronounced "Eh-kay sh-knock") release their new single Own'd Thyself on 27 October. The press release calls it a major-key, Buzzcocks-tinged sprinter, and it runs to just two and a half minutes. There is a video to go with it.
The lyrics are about people who mess up their own lives. Singer, bassist and composer David Roush says that in the internet-brained parlance of our time, human beings have a puzzling habit of "owning ourselves", and that it can be terrible, heartbreaking and hilarious, often all at once. He takes aim at the bullies who think they have humiliated someone else, when really they have sewn the seeds of their own destruction, and at Tucker Carlson-type talking heads without naming names.
The single previews the band's album Dandy Variances, due on 12 March 2027 via Records, Man Records. It was mixed by Mario McNulty, who has worked with David Bowie, Prince and Nine Inch Nails, and mastered by Kris Crummett, whose credits include Sum 41 and Dance Gavin Dance. Three earlier singles from it are Vincent, Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice and Anna O. The lyrics for those three were written by Robin Kneubuhl, David Roush's mother, and in the Anna O video Bella Komodromos plays a woman locked in an asylum who overthrows her abusive doctor.
A band that puts its singer's mum on lyric duties and gets a mixing credit that stretches from Bowie to Prince is my kind of art-rock, and I'm glad to back the new album campaign. The ambition sits alongside a sense of fun here, which is not something every band in this corner of the scene manages.
Ecce Shnak formed in 2011 and are Roush, Komodromos, guitarists Chris Krasnow and Gannon Ferrell, and drummer Henry Buchanan-Vaughn. This is their first run of live dates since three consecutive tours with EMF (West Coast, East Coast and Great Britain), which also led to them appearing on EMF's single LGBTQ+ Lover. Their 2025 EP was called Shadows Grow Fangs.
East Coast tour dates:
- 11 November – Hamden, CT, Space Ballroom
- 12 November – Philadelphia, PA, Nikki Lopez
- 13 November – New Paltz, NY, Scry Chappelle
- 14 November – Boston, MA, O'Brien's Pub
- 15 November – Montreal, QC, L'Esco
- 17 November – Toronto, ON, Dance Cave
- 18 November – Buffalo, NY, Mohawk Place
- 19 November – Brooklyn, NY, Main Drag
- 20 November – Baltimore, MD, Metro Gallery
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/EJy6y3zOnhM
Bandcamp: https://ecceshnak.bandcamp.com/track/ownd-thyself
Tour tickets: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15532430-ecce-shnak