THE ARMOIRES return with their first new music since their widely acclaimed album OCTOBERLAND, and a new single that's part of the Big Stir Records Halloween collection CHILLING, THRILLING HOOKS AND HAUNTED HARMONIES. The new track “Full-On Witch Mode” is out October 10 along with the compilation, and backed with the B-side “You're Not The Police” from the recent Flashcubes tribute Make Something Happen! The single is up for pre-order and pre-save from Big Stir Records now:

https://orcd.co/armoires-witchmode

The Halloween season has become the natural environment of LA indie rockers THE ARMOIRES – CHRISTINA BULBENKO (vocals/keys), REX BROOME (vocals/guitar), LARYSA BULBENKO (viola), JOHN M. BORACK (drums) and CLIFFORD ULRICH (bass) – since the release of their album OCTOBERLAND in its titular month last year. Rife with Autumnal imagery and more than a few affectionate nods to All Hallow's Eve, the record won widespread acclaim for its songwriting and the lush soundscape crafted by the band with producer MICHAEL SIMMONS of sparkle*jets u.k., earning the band five “Album Of The Year” honors from DJs and writers including the UK's I Don't Hear A Single, and slots on over forty Year's Best lists.

“Full-On Witch Mode” pushes that vibe ever closer to “the veil between the worlds.” Revolving around the close vocal harmonies of Broome and Bulbenko, often compared to Fleetwood Mac, Fairport Convention and The New Pornographers, the song rides a sinuous postpunk dub groove evoking The Raincoats, The Slits and Jah Wobble. It's an organic progression from OCTOBERLAND, with the singers' delivery as warm and welcoming as it is eerily mysterious. Swirling viola, ambient synth washes and cascading 12-string weave in and out of the mix as the song builds to a manifesto of a bridge. There, for all its supernatural ornamentation, the song reveals itself as the kind of call for empathy and unselfish thoughtfulness that's emblematic of the band's ongoing thematic concerns: “We can decide what kind of beings that we want to be, and when the world won't align with what we want to see, we go full-on witch mode.”

“We would have created this song even if it hadn't been for CHILLING, THRILLING HOOKS AND HAUNTED HARMONIES,” says the band. “The writing on our last album kept pushing closer and closer to that eldritch borderline, and we began to joke that the only thing left was to go 'full-on witch mode.' So we opened up that grimoire and leaned into the lexicon of alchemy and animism. But like a lot of our songs, it's about looking beyond yourself and connecting with something bigger – the natural world, other human beings, just being thoughtful rather than self-involved. That fit community vibe of the Big Stir Halloween compilation, too... all the artists on it did such amazing work celebrating a holiday that we love for its focus on self-expression. It's dazzlingly diverse but all connected, and we're thrilled to be part of it.”

The B-side gives fans who missed it a chance to hear the band's contribution to MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN! A TRIBUTE TO THE FLASHCUBES, released in September. THE ARMOIRES say of their unique spin on “You're Not The Police” by the NY State power pop legends: “We loved the melody and energy of the original, and we enjoyed gender-swapping the narrator to shake it up for the modern world. Our version pushes it a little toward Revolver-style psych, but we also added a wink to Cheap Trick as if to say, hey, both bands are Power Pop Hall Of Fame inductees, and The Flashcubes should've been just as huge.”

BIG STIR RECORDS is proud to announce the October 11 release of the new album from California indie pop quintet THE ARMOIRES on Vinyl, CD and all Digital platforms. OCTOBERLAND, the band's fourth full-length release, is an invigorating eleven-track collection of amped-up, richly detailed pop gems, including the indie hit singles “We Absolutely Mean It,” “Music & Animals,” “Here Comes The Song” and the forthcoming “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse.” It's up for pre-order and pre-save now.

The latest singles from THE ARMOIRES – the Burbank, California-based band led by CHRISTINA BULBENKO (vocals, keys) and REX BROOME (vocals, guitar), also known as the founders of Big Stir Records – have exuded equal parts brash confidence and sophisticated mystery. There's been the swirling psych-pop manifesto “We Absolutely Mean It,” the sweetly comforting “Music & Animals,” the dramatic strings-driven “Here Comes The Song” and, up next, the giddy postpunk pulsebeat of “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse”. All of them display the band reveling in their unique sound: the ambiguously androgynous harmonies of Broome and Bulbenko, the intricate instrumental interplay between LARYSA BULBENKO's endlessly versatile viola and the electric 12-strings, sweeping synths and delicate piano of the band leaders, and the unerringly empathetic rhythms of JOHN M. BORACK (drums) and CLIFFORD ULRICH (bass).

Produced like all the band's new material with a deft pure pop touch by MICHAEL SIMMONS (0f labelmates sparkle*jets u.k.), the tracks have proven the most accessible and popular entries in the Armoires discography while still retaining the fundamental, slightly eerie mystique of their unique sonic signature. That sound – a bright, brash amalgam of expansive New Pornographers-inspired lit-rock, '90s twee-pop and dream rock, the college rock heights of R.E.M. and Echo & The Bunnymen and a bedrock of Byrds-and-Jefferson-Airplane electric folk roots – unifies the album. But it's the sly yet heartfelt sophistication of the songs that makes OCTOBERLAND such a rewarding experience, and a new watershed for The Armoires.

The album reveals the singles, for all their infectious energy, to be part of a deeply considered and immersively involving song cycle. “The songs were all written at once by Rex and myself,” says Christina, “and while we built them around some joyous, almost childlike chorus hooks like counting, spelling, chanting and nonsense syllables, something deeper started happening underneath it all. Imagery and themes kept surfacing over and over again. Omens, ravens and crows, snakes, cats, our own band name, October and ultimately our semi-utopian destination of Octoberland... references to myths, literature, folklore and modern media as part of a unifying continuum. So much started tying the songs together that it felt as much like world-building as songwriting, and we were so fascinated by the way they were informing each other that the process became part of the theme and the journey, too.”

“For the first time, we were writing explicitly for the band with a full understanding of its strengths and quirks, and we knew our biggest asset was the sound and psychology of us singing together all the time,” adds Rex. “So we consciously decided to sing from a collective perspective, 'we' instead of 'I', across the album. It's inviting and inclusive, but a little bit spooky, and it lends a lot of power to the big theme linking these songs: community and creative collaboration as the antidote to the self-involvement that's tearing our culture apart.” That toxic tendency is explicitly called out on the lilting, folk-rock tinged “Ouroboros Blues (Crow Whisperer)” with its titular reference to the iconic snake-swallowing-its-own-tail, and the galloping jangle-psych-cowpunk hybrid “Green Hellfire At The 7-11”. Unease lurks beneath the surface of the witchy, Stones-informed parable “Sickening Thud” and reaches weapons-grade intensity on “Snake Island Thirteen”, a windswept cry of solidarity with Christina's war-torn ancestral homeland of Ukraine.

But OCTOBERLAND is less concerned with diagnosing that societal “spiritual gangrene” (as the surprisingly playful, Go-Betweens-inspired “You Oughta Be Cut In Half” has it) than seeking a cure through community, compassion and collaboration. As often as not, the songs are celebrations of deep connections between artists. The driving near-shoegaze groove of “This One's For The Swedes” frames lyrics documenting shared adventures with the band's tourmates and labelmates In Deed of Uppsala, Sweden, and “Ridley & Me” is a genuinely funny meta-narrative that assembles a genre-trope-inspired “found family” to fight for the future of “the Artistocracy”. Collaboration is a heart-and-soul passion for The Armoires – when they proclaim “this is not a single point of view, this is a collective” on “We Absolutely Mean It,” for all the song's tongue in cheek absurdity, it's utterly sincere. They do, in fact, absolutely mean it.

The penultimate track brings it all home.“It's A Good Time To Come Back Down From The Cold” is a slow-building piano ballad that finds Broome and Bulbenko mutually taking stock of the journey thus far and planning their next move. “Get on the road and go see the land / Head out with two or three other bands / Let the music and the friendship into your soul,” they sing in harmonies that are as symbolic as they are stacked. That leaves the now-familiar and welcoming thrum of “Music & Animals” to serve as an epilogue, with the destination reached at last: “Maybe out of all the myths and omens, we've built a world to feel at home in,” goes the bridge, “Octoberland: visit us when you can.” For The Armoires, in the end, comfort and creative risk are the complementary cornerstones to that world, and both are best experienced as part of a community of friends and fellow travelers who feel the same.

The timeless landscape on which these stories unfold is complemented by the Art Nouveau-meets-anime illustrations by Ridley Broome which adorn the LP and CD editions of the album. With a sound that encompasses the whole of pop-rock history from the '60s to today, an aesthetic rooted in the 1890s, and a tapestry of lyrical nods to folklore and mythology more ancient still, THE ARMOIRES – Rex, Christina, Larysa, Cliff and John, aided and abetted by Mr. Simmons – have not only delivered their definitive work, they've also fashioned a fully realized world out of time on OCTOBERLAND. This is your invitation... come join them for the ride, and visit them when you can, as often as you want.

With the new album OCTOBERLAND by THE ARMOIRES already in pre-order and due in its titular month, the rising Southern California indie-pop-rock combo puts forth one last single previewing the record: “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse”. Despite the grim title, it's a giddy, upbeat sing-and-spell-along rave-up, and one of the catchiest tunes in the band's catalog. The single (including a Radio Edit and the full-length Album Version) is out September 20 (to be followed by a hybrid animated/live action video) and it's up for pre-order/pre-save now.

https://orcd.co/armoires-ridleynme

There's always been a postpunk/new wave undercurrent to The Armoires, and on “Ridley & Me” the band goes all in, as the harmonies, jangle and viola of their signature sound map organically onto the kind of groove that brought New Order and The Cure their biggest and brightest hits. The “Single Edit” gets down to business right away, while the Album Version plays out like a Factory Records 12” mix, allowing the rhythm section of John M. Borack (drums) and Clifford Ulrich (bass) to cook during an extended intro before before vocalist-keyboardist Christina Bulbenko unleashes a massive, Gary Numan-inspired synth riff, chased by the 12-string of co-singer Rex Broome and the viola of Larysa Bulbenko... and then the harmonies kick in and the storytelling begins.

“The whole album is a series of stories,” says Bulbenko. “It's all about how stories, music, and art bind us together and offer us solace in dark times. 'Ridley & Me' is the song where we have the most fun with that. There are a lot of really funny, really 'meta' lines in this song, and we totally revel in them, even in this dystopian setting. We hope the listeners have fun singing along to that big bright chorus, where we challenge them to spell A-P-O-C-A-L-Y-P-S-E as fast as we do,” she laughs. “We sing about fighting for the future of what we call 'the artistocracy', and, as one of our other songs says, we absolutely mean it. We wrote this song before the phrase rose to prominence, but we'd happily classify ourselves as joyful warriors on this one.”

And just who is Ridley? That would be Ridley Broome, Rex's daughter (21), the graphic designer behind all of the dazzling, art-nouveau-inspired artwork for Octoberland and its related singles. “The real-life Ridley and me – our whole family, really – we're constantly engaged in an ongoing conversation about genre tropes, narrative conventions, the way storytelling works from its mythological beginnings to modern stuff like anime and videogames,” says Rex. “So the launchpad for the lyrics in this song was, what if we found ourselves inside one of those stories, in a sci-fi/fantasy setting after some some worldwide catastrophe? I could only imagine we'd just continue this life-affirming, joy-sparking conversation. What's the magical system here? When do we get to the transformation sequence? We're hearing some music, but is it real or just the soundtrack? We gleefully lean into the nerdiness of it. It's copium for trying times, as the bridge says.”

The previous singles from the album – the comfortingly sweet “Music & Animals”, the defiant psych-rock anthem “We Absolutely Mean It” and the poignant chamber pop of “Here Comes The Song” -- have all hinted at the world-building intent of THE ARMOIRES on OCTOBERLAND, and “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” distills the approach. “We're doing unapologetic lit-rock, but we're having fun with it,” says Broome. “These are like Leonard Cohen or Lou Reed songs, arranged and performed like a B-52's party album. They fit together and create a time and place of their own. And we can't wait to welcome our listeners to explore it for themselves.”

August 24 is Ukrainian Independence Day, and with the war-torn nation now into the third year of the devastating Russian invasion, BIG STIR RECORDS – co-founded by first-generation Ukrainian American CHRISTINA BUKBENKO – brings music fans worldwide a way to help. A new two-song/two-artist split single, SONGS FOR UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY pairs a striking track from singer-songwriter-composer (and beloved host of the widely syndicated Crankin' Up radio show) ROY CRANK of Kharkiv, Ukraine, with a new song from Bulbenko's own band THE ARMOIRES, written to honor the defenders of her ancestral homeland. All proceeds from the single – available for purchase August 24 from Big Stir's website and Bandcamp page before hitting streaming services worldwide on the 30th – will be donated to the humanitarian aid organization United Help Ukraine. Donate via purchase or pre-save to stream the single here:

https://orcd.co/songsforukraine

THE ARMOIRES – the Burbank-based indie pop band currently winning new fans with singles like “Here Comes The Song” and “Music & Animals” previewing their fourth album due this October – offer up another new selection from the record, “Snake Island Thirteen”, written at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ROY CRANK contributes his own composition, the poignantly-titled and beautiful “Don't Kill That World I'm Living In”, recorded for his album The Tiny Pics. The Armoires, who (virtually) met Roy when his terrific radio show Crankin' Up became a key supporter of Big Stir Records artists, had always intended for “Snake Island Thirteen” to serve as a fundraiser for the people of Ukraine, hoping to pair it with a work from a Ukrainian artist, and upon learning of Roy's own music, the way forward was clear. The single marks Big Stir Records' second benefit effort with United Help Ukraine, after an initiative in 2022 when over 20 of the label's bands including The Armoires donated all profits from record sales to the charity.

“I'm a composer and performer from Kharkiv, Ukraine and sometimes the host of the Crankin' Up radio show,” says Roy, referring to his program, carried by Topcat Radio, My Indie Radio, AntiRadio and more, that's become an essential showcase for indie artists worldwide... the “sometimes” being a reference to the show's occasional delays due to blackouts caused by Russian airstrikes. “I have created a couple of albums that I genuinely composed  from the bottom of my heart to yours. Melodies, arrangement and lyrics are created by me, and I perform the vocals and analogue  synths parts as well. All the other instruments were kindly performed by my musician friends in Ukraine. The song 'Don't Kill That World I'm Living In' is from my album The Tiny Pics, which you can support on my Bandcamp page. Initially the song was written to protest the deforestation of the local woodland near where I live, but since 2022 the song has taken on a new narrative meaning altogether.” The soaring, emotive arrangement of the song is sure to be a revelation to pop fans – especially those with an ear for the sophisticated, radio-friendly pop of the early '70s – who only know Roy as a DJ, and we are honored to be able to bring it to a wider audience in the service of an essential cause.

“Snake Island Thirteen” was the first song written for the forthcoming album by THE ARMOIRES (whose members, along with Bulbenko on vocals and keys, include singer-guitarist Rex Broome, bassist Clifford Ulrich, drummer John M. Borack and Christina's daughter Larysa Bulbenko on viola). Inspired by the Ukrainian soldiers defending the titular island in the Black Sea when it came under siege by Russian naval vessels in February of 2022 and their iconic radio message of defiance, it takes the core true story and combines it with the mythological folklore of the island itself and the iconography of the Ukrainian culture to celebrate the courage of those holding the line against seemingly impossible odds. It features one of Christina's most heartfelt and visceral vocal performances ever, for every reason in the world. The harmony arrangement calls back to the likes of Fairport Convention, while the band taps into the taut jangle of The Church's early work and the strings-and-guitar interplay of Porcupine-era Echo & The Bunnymen, especially on the tense instrumental bridge section. The track ends with a recording of the exchange between the Russian warship Moskva and the defenders of Snake Island, which was to become such a rallying cry for Ukraine and its supporters that it was ultimately depicted on Ukrainian postage stamps. “Snake Island Thirteen” is a song of deep personal importance to The Armoires, and they hope it will serve to foster awareness of, and action toward ending, the war in Ukraine.

UNITED HELP UKRAINE is a deeply respected non-profit supporting the Ukrainian people for over ten years, a mission that's taken on increased urgency since the Russian invasion. Their stated mission in 2024 is “to provide the people of Ukraine with critical support that will enable them to survive in the face of adversity, to defend and regain their sovereign territory, and to rebuild and thrive well into the future. UHU is committed to maximizing the impact of charitable contributions by providing humanitarian, medical and psychological assistance to those affected by the war. We also focus on raising awareness and advocating for Ukraine to remain a free, democratic and independent nation.” We're honored to be donating all proceeds from the SONGS FOR UKRAINAN INDEPEDENCE DAY single to UHU, and we encourage those who opt to stream the tracks upon their release to consider a donation.

Contact UNITED HELP UKRAINE: https://unitedhelpukraine.org

Support Ukrainian musician ROY CRANK by purchasing his album THE TINY PICS: https://roycrank1.bandcamp.com/album/the-tiny-pics

For all things related to THE ARMOIRES: https://orcd.co/the-armoires