Reserver Photo credit: Dan Wendt
Chicago indie rockers Reserver are releasing their debut LP, Reverser, on August 14 via Funambulist Recording Company. Today, the band shares their new single, “Spirit Fauna.”
Explains vocalist and guitarist Chad Preston, “For ‘Spirit Fauna,’ the title came first and I worked backwards from there, liking where it ended up, lyrically. If you asked me, it’s about how we’re all a little too disconnected from our animal selves and at the same time completely trapped by them. Like a reminder.”
The band grew out of a difficult period for Preston, who stepped back from his previous group, The Laureates, to care for his wife Kerri after her cancer diagnosis in 2018. He turned to songwriting as a way to cope, writing many of the songs that would become Reverser during that time. After Kerri passed away in 2022, bassist Crawfie Ward encouraged Preston to record the material, and the project grew into a full band with the addition of guitarist Adam Penly and drummer Dan Wendt.
The album channels that loss into loud, cathartic rock, drawing on influences like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Pavement. Tracks off the debut include the noisy psych-rock single “Server” which touches on grief and dissociation, the shoegaze-leaning “Spirit Fauna,” and lead track “Heart Is A Bomb,” which reflects on mortality. But if Reverser symbolizes anything, it’s that you can always change course from heartbreak — that you can survive the unthinkable and come out stronger for it.
The band will celebrate with a release show at Reeds Local in Chicago on August 21.
New music on the way? Pitch Big Takeover Exclusives.
