Waters

Despite noting that each album he makes feels like it might be his last, Waters singer-guitarist Van Pierszalowski says he knows at his core he’ll always be creating. “I have to make music. I have to make records. I have to tour until I absolutely can’t do it anymore.” The uneasiness inspired Waters’ third album, “Something More!” set for release on May 19^th via Vagrant/BMG.

Perhaps no song better articulates the seeking ethos of the album than its lead single and opening track “Hiccups,” all chant-along vocals, adolescent angst and rowdy riffs, finds Pierszalowski bellowing “I ain’t got no regrets…all my fuck-ups, all my hiccups, only brought me to you.” “I wanted to express that the fuck-ups and the mistakes are a necessary part of the struggle to figure shit out. Don't beat yourself up about it so damn much,” he says of the Pinkerton-inspired cut.

Waters consists of Van Pierszalowski (vocals & guitar), Brian DaMert (guitar), Greg Sellin (bass), Andrew Wales (drums) and Sara DaMert (keyboard). Pierszalowski traveled to Oslo to work on the band’s debut album, “Out In The Light,” and in 2011, it was released. They went on to put out their album, “What’s Real” in 2015.

After two albums and an EP, Van Pierszalowski gave his band Waters a rest last year, releasing two singles under the guise of his solo project Van William. Now he’s revved up his quintet’s engine again with the declaration: “I wanted to make a record that was communicating with my teenager self, as if to say ‘It’s always gonna be the same shit just in slightly different contexts.’ I wanted to make a mixtape, scribble notes all over the paper sleeve, get into the DeLorean, find high-school Van, and say ‘Listen to this.’”

Van Pierszalowski grew up in Cambria, a small town on the central coast of California. He spent his summers on his dad's fishing boat on Kodiak, Alaska. He did his time in the Bay Area and spent a chunk of his adult life living in Oslo, Norway. And while the specific circumstances may have changed for the creative mastermind behind the fiery California rock crew, Waters, the same anxieties from high school have always persisted.

To that end, the bulk of the songs that comprise Something More! speak to feelings of restlessness and being alone, as well as having uber-intense issues with lovers, friends and family. But, as Pierszalowski says in explaining how in spite of this the album contains some of the most raucous, hook-driven songs of the band’s career, “These songs are pop songs. They sound fun on the surface. But they are dark songs in disguise.”

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