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Nothing else sounds like Drag Talk. On debut album Drink The Ocean (MNRK Heavy), the L.A. band finds gauzy beauty in the fathomless chaos that surrounds us, their exquisite shoegaze guitars and Britpop melodicism skewed with Jutty Taylor’s genre-fluid vocals.
Harnessing ‘90s indie nostalgia to here-and-now emotional responses, Drag Talk’s lush atmospherics, spacious beats, and hugely emotive hooks create something singular yet accessible and authentic. “I feel like we’re hardcore punk dudes who love Oasis,” offered guitarist Ross O’Carroll, whose pandemic home demos were the germ of the band in 2021.
Drag Talk is a coming-together of like-minded friends with long, intertwined histories. O’Carroll, Taylor, and drummer Hayden Scott were former bandmates, while the latter pair also played together in Grammy-winning Swedish rock band Ghost. O’Carroll and fellow guitarist Matt Ripp Bennett were schoolmates in Hawaii but had somehow never been in the same band, and third guitarist (yes, there are three) Neil Popkin played alongside Ripp Bennett in War Tapes. Even the band’s producer, Tom Syrowski (The Killers, Mastodon), has been in their circle since the aughts.
Drag Talk released their debut single, “Egyptian Flesh” in 2022 and the Dogs EP the following year. By the time they dropped follow-up EP Rosy Crown in 2024, they’d earned a cult following evidenced by sell-out shows on both coasts and a deal with MNRK Music Group.
“The silver lining with any kind of personal tragedies that we go through, if you’re an artist, is turning it into something,” mulled the effervescent, mustachioed Taylor of Drink The Ocean, which is set for a September 2026 release. “There were just some things that I felt compelled to say, so there’s a definite color to the record.”
Drink The Ocean is a lovingly layered creation that connects on multiple levels, its recurring themes of injustice and femininity flavored with Taylor’s spiritual and esoteric interests. Even the album’s title is open to interpretation: a dismissive kiss-off; an ode to one-life-to-live experimentation and excess; or an allusion to the struggles that beset the album’s creation.
“It’s an impossible task but you can spend your life trying – it might be fun!” grinned Taylor, whose wry curiosity and irrepressible charisma permeate Drag Talk’s majestic music. “Maybe that’s what the record felt like for some of us – drowning in liberation!”
Once again working with Syrowski, their sole producer to date, Drag Talk tracked Drink The Ocean at his L.A. home and at Hollywood’s storied Henson Studios. Rooted in heady, shimmering shoegaze evoking Swervedriver, The Verve, and Jesus and Mary Chain, the album also flirts with dream pop, psych, and classic rock. Its defining trait is mating all this to the single-minded cadence and mischievous vaudevillian instincts of Taylor, an inimitable force-of-nature fusion of David Berman and Elliot Smith.
“Whereas my bandmates are definitely more schooled in the encyclopedic aesthetic of just beautiful ‘90s guitar rock, I kind of rely on my own ignorance when it comes to putting my own voice on it,” Taylor continued. “This fucking guy who’s never heard a shoegaze record!”
Drink The Ocean opens with narcotically escapist single “Pony Up,” its burbling bass, gossamer guitars, and intriguingly irreverent lyrics setting the tone for the album. “There’s also a theme to the record of gambling – certain phrases and things that I allude to,” Taylor explained. “So, yeah, ‘pony up’ – cough up; it’s time to pay.”
Driving yet dreamy second single “Kingdoms” is simultaneously visceral, vengeful, and ecstatic, its message rich in ostensibly mysterious metaphor. “The lyrics of the chorus were going to be something different that would have put us in hot water. I was feeling pretty angry, so this is the radio edit!” Taylor recalled. “All the modalities of existence that I’m naming in the song – severity, splendor, victory – are specific spheres in the Tree of Life.”
“Would It Kill You” channels Nirvana’s potent simplicity and Smashing Pumpkins’ heart-stopping dynamics juxtaposed with Taylor’s swooning, face-to-the-sun topline, while “Mr. High Life” takes Catherine Wheel sensibilities somewhere intoxicatingly new.
Guest appearances on Drink The Ocean include uber-producer Brendan O’Brien (RATM, AC/DC) playing Hammond organ on the album’s brooding title track, and Ghost’s Olivia Morreale singing backups on the stomping “Welcome to the Aeon.”
Equally entrancing on late night home-alone headphones or at packed, immersive shows, Drag Talk has conjured a sonic and emotional niche just when none seemed left to discover. A rare creative brotherhood steeped in personal and musical chemistry, they’re a band for alt-rock fans who want to nudge the familiar forward, refract the comfortable, and respectfully reframe tradition.