Crazy Arms is the 4th LP by Olympia, WA country/punk maximalists Pigeon Pit, and their first since becoming a nationally touring 6-piece band. It's a is a melodic call to action for folks who listen to both The Weakerthans and CRASS. A night at the Ryman on slow-burn psychedelics and the dreams you choose to think out loud at sunrise. Crazy Arms is the sound of a band hitting their stride, comfortable in the chaos, letting you know you arenβt alone.
βThe terror breathes beside me: another little act of sabotageβ β βRun Your Pocketsβ
As front-woman Lomes Oleander tells it: "Itβs last call for nuance before we all get put against the wall so Iβll just cheers to the human spirit: weβre all fucked up and crazy people. letβs get wild with it and love our humanity while we can, all our contradictions and flaws that make us real. this is a bunch of love songs for how fucked up we are, and how beautiful it is how we try anyway. how we struggle every day to change our shared reality, to produce a world around us that makes sense to us. when you see a genocide unfolding on your phone, see fascism and AI swallowing up reality, and you force yourself to push it down and not respond to your humanity inside you that calls you to intervene, when it feels like thereβs nothing you can do, thatβs what kills the human spirit. because that force of love and cooperation is humanity, thatβs what makes sense inside of us. giving a shit is the unpopular opinion. iβm just writing about what it feels like for me to try to hang on in a world thatβs trying to kill the human spirit."
"Dilapidation's on the inside, a city choking out the night sky. It's gonna be another late night: whatever makes you feel alive." β βKeys to The Cityβ
"Weβve been busy as hell the last couple years. we did a lot of touring, and it was really our first-time touring or playing shows as a full band. our full lineup had been practicing 3 weeks or so when we recorded Feather River Canyon Blues (2022). We never played a show together until after that. and weβve played a lot now, we got to play tiny desk, toured Australia and New Zealand, and got to tour with Laura Jane Grace. and all the while Iβm kind of stumbling around the country getting devastated by the immensity of love and humanity as it all falls apart and writing all this new stuff."
"Every moment, like broken glass, a holding cell, a furtive glance, falls in squares of light across an empty bedroom floor" - βBronco"
"We recorded crazy arms in my friend Vivienneβs basement, all analog onto a 1/2β tape through a 4-track, so itβs mostly live tracks, which is really fun. you canβt dub over a bunch of instruments or redo individual parts when you mess up. we dragged this piano across town in a van and squeezed it into her basement. it wouldnβt fit into the studio so i ended up playing the piano from the basement with all the mics and wires running out of the studio space. working with all these insane restrictions forces you to get creative and gives the thing youβre working on a sort of living character. it gets fucked up through the process, like a kid becoming a person. itβs more country than the last one, itβs more pop punk, itβs more experimental, itβs more of everything. iβm just having fun with my friends. i couldnβt have any favorite songs, but thereβs a song that Maddy (banjo, vocals) wrote on it, which is just so special to me and her voice is so unique and devastating."