Rough Trade

New Orleans no-wave punks Special Interest announced today that they will release Endure, their third album and Rough Trade Records debut, on Friday, November 4th, 2022. The announcement was accompanied by lead single “Midnight Legend” featuring iconic rapper, performance artist, poet and activist Mykki Blanco, and complete with a stunning music video directed by Special Interest vocalist Alli Logout. Endure was self-produced and recorded at HighTower in New Orleans with engineering by James Whitten, mixed by Collin Dupuis (Angel Olsen, Yves Tumor, Lana Del Rey) and mastered by Matt Colton in London at Metropolis.

Endure is available for pre-order now via Rough Trade Records, and a “Midnight Legend” 7” (limited to 1000 copies) featuring both the Mykki Blanco-version of the track and the album version of the track is currently available exclusively here, alongside the last copies of the now long sold out “(Herman’s) House” 7”. Special Interest will tour the West Coast in September including an appearance at Primavera LA, and today announced November and December headline dates including a stop at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom on December 8th.

Their music is a soundtrack to dancing the pain away as much as raging against the machine. Brought together by New Orleans’ inventive DIY scene, Special Interest finds a new way of defining the “rock band,” a true collective unit rather than the dictated vision of a single member. Their sound is ever-fluid and continues to evolve — Special Interest actually began as the duo of Alli Logout and Maria Elena with guitar, drum machine, and a power drill, before Nathan Cassiani and Ruth Mascelli filled out its current line-up.

The new songs recall the art rock of Sparks and The B-52s as much as politically-minded punk, and on “Midnight Legend,” the group is more overtly pop than ever before — making something fun during a time of frequent sadness became a central priority. But that doesn’t mean anything is simple or surface-level, with a darkness often treading beneath the smooth production. For as much as the band plays with dissonance, Maria Elena’s expressive guitar work and Nathan Cassiani’s grooving bass lines effortlessly weave together, and shade out the soundscape brought into existence by Alli Logout’s commanding vocal presence.