Drug Couple “Linda’s Trip”

The latest single to emerge from their upcoming ‘Stoned Weekend’ project, it’s a track that finds the Couple’s holiday-for-the-head taking a supernatural side road.

Described by the duo as “a song about a couple of teenage bloodsuckers and their tumultuous friendship”, thankfully it’s more of a bitter and twisted yarn from the back-of-beyond, than ‘Twilight’-style fiction for the teen-vampire trash pile.

Lurching into earshot on a wave of knotty guitar lines, spindly mandolins, rickety solos and feedback obfuscated vocals; “Linda’s Tripp” sounds like the glorious Neil Young / Dinosaur Jr / R.E.M hook-up that never happened.

As easy-going in its euphoria, as it is mixed-up in its melancholy; “Linda’s Tripp” captures the roller coaster of adolescence and outsiderdom with an abject sense of chaos. It’s title is sure to raise a grin among US history hacks too…

“It’s name is an homage to one of the most notably tumultuous female friendships of all time” hints Miles Robinson. “It was inspired by a feeling more than music but I guess it ended up being a Dinosaur Jr rip.”

“Linda’s Tripp” follows the seasonal slacker-rock anthem “Our December” and the laid-back lushness of lead single “Lemon Trees”. All three will feature on the band’s fast approaching debut album ‘Stoned Weekend’ (released digitally on 18th February, via PaperCup Music).

Drug Couple is Miles and Becca Robinson. They used to be a “Brooklyn band”, until they moved to the Vermont countryside. They got married, grow marijuana, like country and American indie rock, and don’t particularly miss the city.

They left NYC on Friday 13th March, 2020 for a wedding planning weekend in the sticks. Two weeks later they found themselves unemployed, in the middle of the woods, with a whole lot of time on their hands. In a two-hundred-year-old barn set amongst the rolling pastures of the grounds they now called home, they built a studio and named it “Freelandia”. It’s there that they laid down their upcoming debut LP: ‘Stoned Weekend’.

Wearing a country-skewed American indie/rock sound that fits as comfortably as a favourite jacket and has long since cared what other people think of it, Drug Couple dress-up a debut offering that’s as cool and classic as it is languorously loose and laid-back.

While ‘Stoned Weekend’ isn’t so much a departure from Drug Couple’s first two EPs (‘Little Hits’, 2019, and ‘Choose Your Own Apocalypse’, 2020), it’s an example of what a band can grow into when given the space, both artistically and literally, to expand. When they absconded from their city life, solitary walks in the forest replaced crowded bars, and sprawling pastoral scenes gave way to heady songs best enjoyed blasted on car speakers instead of through headphones on the subway. With their new way of life filtering into the music they made, ‘Stoned Weekend’ is the sound of Drug Couple living the good life and showing it.

Drug Couple’s ‘Stoned Weekend’ draws influence from The Lemonheads, Yo La Tengo, Uncle Tupelo, Dinosaur Jr, and Neil Young. Featuring the couple themselves, Miles on vocals, guitar, bass, harmonica, and keys; Becca on vocals, bass, guitar, and harmonica; it’s a release that also finds room to introduce Pastor Greg Faison, who plays drums throughout. Elsewhere, Danny Meyer and Travis Rosenberg each play on two tracks: Danny on saxophone and piano, and Travis on pedal steel.

Produced in the capable hands of Miles Robinson himself, the LP showcases the understated talents of the band as much as it showcases their (perhaps commercially misguided) desire to make the kind of independent music they want to make. A world away from the bedroom-produced Billie Eilish-inspired sad-girl “pop but not” entries of today; it’s a collection of barn-produced blasts from a couple who get a kick out of alternative music, almost as much as they do each other’s company.

Like that holiday for the head you never knew you needed, lose yourself in a dream-like haze of hash, love and languid sounds when Drug Couple’s ‘Stoned Weekend’ finally descends in 2022.